Meanwhile a team of Swiss researchers are harnessing rays of light for an entirely different purpose -- they've figured out a way to create rain clouds by shooting laser beams into the sky.

ENGADGET: Inhabitat's Week in Green: salad spinners, diapers, and solutions to the Deepwater catastrophe

In other green tech and design news, Hitachi unveiled an impressive new wireless controlled robot to help with the Fukushima Daiichi cleanup and London-based designers Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves developed the GravityLight, an amazing low-energy, battery-free light that works by harnessing the power of weight and gravity.

ENGADGET: Inhabitat's Week in Green: madder root batteries, sun-powered plane and the world's first fiber-optic solar cell