It turns out that getting control over sea waves is not only the challenge of those, involved in surfing. Scientists from all over the world are currently trying to captivate the energy of waves and turn it into electricity. Bulgarians compete in this big race too. A small team of the Institute of Systems Engineering and Robotics with the BAS, headed by Prof. Gencho Staynov is working on the creation of an intelligent device, which will be able to extract energy from sea waves in the surfing zone. “We aim at its usage along our seaside, which has a lower wave potential and we also want it to be cheap, so that more people can have access to it,” PhD Bozhidar Naydenov explains. All camping fans can take advantage of such a device, as those usually don’t have electricity. You can use it for your fridge, mobile phone, TV or radio… The sudden increasing of waves in storms is one of the reasons why mankind still can’t get hold of their energy.

“The most important thing about this device is its sustainability to storms, as the wave energy goes up hundreds of times during storms" Bozhidar explains. "Even in the Black Sea the energy increases 200 – 300 times and so the device should be easy for protection. The previous version we created back in 2012 was designed for deep waters. The idea is that when a storm appears and more energy gets produced, the device registers that and sinks on its own. It only needs 4 km down. When the storm is over, it floats again on the surface and continues working. Our latest version is for shallower spots. Then the device could pull itself to the shore. Its simplified construction is the other interesting thing about this version. We try to keep it as cheap and simplified as possible, since simple things are the most effective, reliable and cheap ones in terms of maintenance. This device manages to pull out 20 percent of the waves’ energy.”

The Bulgarian gadget is at the prototype level and is yet to be developed and improved. One of the goals of the scientists is to popularize this type of green energy and to make it more approachable. Bozhidar says that despite the low payment the BAS is a great start for young experts, especially in the sphere of technology and engineering. He is a graduate of the Technical University, has been a PhD for three years with the institute and is about to defend his thesis now. Bozhidar is convinced that Bulgarian scientists have nothing to be ashamed of, but the problem lies in the lack of enough funding for the implementation of their ideas. The young man has worked for 5 months in Sweden on his bachelor’s thesis, while in 2012 he spent about six months in France, specializing.

“During my bachelor’s studies I visited the Örebro University in Sweden, were they are really seriously involved in robotics", Bozhidar goes on to say. "There is a strong Bulgarian team at their lab. When I got touched by this scientific area back then I saw it was a tough branch, but also very interesting. There were extremely fast robots there! Robotics is a vast field, one can deal with mechanics, construction, control and not with one thing only. It seizes lots of engineering spheres.”

English version: Zhivko Stanchev