(CNN)-- Here's a new way of looking at oil spill clean-up: Forget the big ships, massive work crews and hefty price tags. Instead, just deploy an army of autonomous, oil-scrubbing robots. The $20,000 robots will be unveiled officially to the public on Saturday at an event in Venice, Italy, and will be ready to deal with oil spills in about a year, said Assaf Biderman, who oversaw MIT's research team on the project. "You can imagine it like a carpet rolling on the surface of the water," said Biderman, who also is associate director of theSENSEable City Lab.