Tiny Aircraft Feeds Itself With Dead Flies

An anonymous reader writes "The research team from southwest England have built a robot which can move and transmit sensor data over a radio link powered solely by unrefined food including dead flies and apples. The robot, known as Ecobot II, uses a Microbial Fuel Cell as its only power source. By "digesting" its own fuel, the aircraft could become autonomous and operate without the need for refueling, changing batteries or recharging from the mains. In the Microbial Fuel Cell microbes are used to extract electricity directly from food - in this case flies or apple." Several people noted this previous article on the same project.

....so now we have....

[Anonymous Coward]

Robot feces?

huh?

[bje2]

i don't get it...i read the article, and it says:

By "digesting" its own fuel, the aircraft could become autonomous and operate without the need for refuelling, changing batteries or recharging from the mains.

and

Like insects and birds, it is just possible that such micro aircraft might one day even be able to feed themselves. Researchers at the University of the West of England are creating a new breed of autonomous robot that will carry out specific tasks and even "feed" themselves while working.

how is not refuling possible...unless they're inventing some sort of perpetual motion machine (which would seem to violate some laws of thermodynamics), how could it not need refueling?...even if your fuel is only dead insects and apples, you would still need a constant supply of them...am i missing something here?


reminds me of a great simpsons quote though... "In this house we obey the laws of Thermodynamics." -- Homer (Simpson)

Re:Great Scott!

[Bastian]

On the other hand, if I could run my car off of the sludge of used grains left over after making the wort, I'd probably be making a lot more beer.

Mosquitoes?

[TigrOoOo]

What's it going to take for this thing to feed on mosquitoes? Live, preferably. And if its possible, where can I get about fifty thousand of these things?

Bloody mosquitoes...

Aircraft??

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I've read the article 2x, and read the other posts, but i'm not seeing any aircraft. Seems the current stage of the technology is a 1kg Ecobot that achieves an astounding 30m/hr - is that fast enough for takeoff?

Disgusting End of Digestion

[lbmouse]

"...its ability to power itself by digesting its fuel is a major advance..."

They don't explain how the 'back-end' of the digestion process works. Guess they'll need to create even smaller robots with pooper-scoopers.

Reminds me

[beforewisdom]

This story, and the picture of the rail thin Asian man who is a tsunami victim I asw this morning in the paper reminded me of the lyrics from a RUSH song I heard back in the 80s, paraphrasing, "They feed the machines, not the people"

Re:why bother with messy biomatter at all?

[lxt]

Because there's far more biomatter available than high tensile power wires. I'm looking out the window now, and can see no power lines at all (it's all underground), but I can see a ton of biomass. Also, taking power from power lines would render the whole point of the project redundant - renewable, clean energy? Power from power lines has to be generated, and it's highly likely that power is coming from a highly polluting source.

practicality

[ripcrd]

Ok, so they are working on this in a micro scale, but when the hell are they going to make one the size of a gas tank that can power my car???

I've been reading autobiographies of astronauts and others involved in the US Space program recently. They all talk about the fuel cell developed and used during Gemini and later Apollo. I want to know why, 40 yrs. later, these things are not yet practical? Was there just not enough motivation to make one work in that 40 yrs or was it because until now, gas was relatively cheap and no one cared about the smelly smoke coming from cars?

I say force a greater percentage of cars to be hybrids as a start and get ready to roll out the fuel cells.