Crab

The Crab is a highly innovative amphibious vehicle which, by employing avant-garde technology, can operate under difficult condition where traditional vehicles would be useless: mudflats, sandy ground, natural and man-made basins with shallow bottoms, and coastal waters are its normal working environment. It has numerous uses in the ecology field, first of all in the recovery of floating and semisubmerged macropollution with a suitable scoop, which function like the mouth of a vacuum cleaner. The material is sucked up and dumped in the service hold or in other containers. The small crane may recover heavier materials. Its intervention in areas previously considered beyond recovery, such as marshland, ponds, canals, rivers and storage tanks, are extremely efficacious.
The Crab has proved very useful in the clearance of canals and basins with low speed of water flow and consequent deposits of alluvial mud, and the growth of palustrine plants, which, if not removed, block the flow. The Crab cuts the vegetation with mowers and cutters. The cutting and removal of mud is effected by an octopus grab fitted to the crane; the scoop dumps into a hopper wherefrom a belt carries the material to be dumped.
Sucking up sand from the seabed up to 100 meters from the coast and depositing it on the beach, the Crab can deal with the erosion of sandy bathing sites. In fish and shellfish farming, it can be used for site preparation, leveling and oxygenating the bottom, eliminating weed and other vegetation, and planting and uprooting poles for shellfish culture.
In civil defense and protection, the Crab becomes irreplaceable in dealing with natural disasters such as flooding: in these situation it can be used for the transport of humans or of urgently required material in inaccessible zones as well as for clearance operations. A fire-fighting module is also being prepared. For underwater research and work, the Crab is fitted with a tele-camera and a highly selective acoustic sounder (sonar). The same configuration can be used for underwater archaeology, seeking the artifact and freeing it from sand and mud.