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A Robot That Runs On A Sugar High
Digitalia writes: "Using a biological soup that mimics our stomachs, the gastrobot is the first commercial robot that "feeds" on organic matter to get its energy. Chew Chew, as it is called, takes a cube of sugar and turns it into enough energy to roll around for 15 minutes. I particularly enjoyed the creator's explanation as to why his bots aren't carnivores. Check the article out here." 15 minutes seems a pretty good run for a sugar-cube, but hasn't anyone explained the carbohydrates theory to this robot?
We need to get this thing to utilize caffiene as well as sugar and get it cranked up on Mt. Dew, or Jolt even. The thing might blow up, though, but think of the speed enhancements...
One Can Never Own Enough Musical Instruments...
There is a much shorter article in the December 2000 issue of Popular Science.
...and I'm not sure we should trust this Kyle Sagan either.
In that article it mentions that the creator has plans to build another robot that would be able to search out it's own food source.
I don't think he's worried about the robots getting fat, infact this could prevent the overconsumption of glucose.
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This was all over CNN and Yahoo around July or August. Are yall this slow now?
Is there a way it could eat things it could find in a land fill?
If they leave the input side open, they'll also be eating flies. Anyone hear how the SlubBot is doing?
I think it could be faster and last longer if it were smaller, I know it's a prototype but i've seen smaller battlebots.
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If it runs for fifteen minutes on a cube of sugar, just think of how long it could run on a single Hostes Twinkee...
Oops... I just got an overflow error on my TI-89.
This was in Popular Science a few months ago.
If he wants to have his bots tend orange groves, wouldn't he get more electical oomph out of citric acid than sugars? I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers the "lemon battery" science project as a kid.....
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Those idiots should have made it run on caffeine and sugar. Perhaps this kind of thing could be useful for medical nanobots.
I never thought it could happen to me... I was so careful... I should have known... I had... WARM BAWLS!
Man, someone should bring you up on charges of plagerism with that web page of yours about cryptography...have you no mind of your own?
Yah, I've encountered some of those... They're called programmers.
--hongpong.com
Hmm. The Slugbot page has not been updated since February 2000. Must not be slug season.
Seems like it was months ago :)
I saw this in a magazine over six months ago. Quite an old story.
All the bot can do is roll around until its battery runs out, then you feed it more sugar. It sits there for a few hours charging on the sugar, then rolls some more.
All in all, not really much in the way of a threat, but a pretty neat idea. As for flesh-eating robots bent on human destruction taking over the earth one day, I seriously doubt it. That would require some pretty good intelligence, and I just don't know if we would ever come that close.
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The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
The really interesting aspect of this experiment is that the guy managed to generate electrical power from simple bacteria.
Imagine a machine with a miniaturized, balanced eco-system on board, where the production of algae or some other easily grown form of life provided enery to bacteria or some other life form, which in turn provided waste products that fostered algae growth.
They would be low powered machines (akin, I would think, to sloths), but given the exponential growth of new technology these days, I bet somebody could come up with a fairly efficient machine.
Beer has lots of sugar... I think that the robot should be converted to beer power! Just think of it, a legion of fat, drunken robots lazing about in suburban America
I can see it now, this robot is gonan kill one of the techs that designed it and use the twinkie defense.
:-P
much of substance beyond the fact that e.coli and sugar are used and the creator doesn't think meat will work. I wonder how long the "digestive tract" is good for? Do the e.coli bacteria die at some point and the machine stop working? How does it scale?
In any event, the orange grove concept is a neat one but I wonder what "monitoring" needs to take place in an orange grove that a fixed sensor couldn't handle?
I honestly forgot I did that page. I had to do one for some highschool class and I really didn't put any effort into it.
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Eat all you want, have it get rid of a percentage of the sugars for you.
Fight Spammers!
...after a week of preparation and hours of digestion Chew Chew's sugar high lasts only 15 minutes at best...
... the gastrobots have been built without the ability to defecate...
But what about after that? If you keep feeding it sugar, does it keep running? How long is the 'stomach' sustainable?
Hmmm, one problem:
I wonder on the energy efficiency of a system like this. I see that the original reporter in the story was not taking this too seriously, even though this does have some potential. Some details provided are interesting
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It doesn't seem to me that the author has a very good hold on the possibilities that AI holds. I doubt that a device that did nothing but roll can have much intelligence. I have many friends who do nothing but roll (drug world term for using MDMA), and they sure as hell don't exhibit much intelligence. On the other hand, this was funny as hell: "One trembles at the image of a world plagued by constipated mechanical berserkers."
He must not go on. There will be no candy left any where. What will we do?!
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Being a car/bike nut I like the idea of replacing the messy, inefficient engine.
One of the alternatives is electric power, the main problem is storing the electric power to drive the motor.
Short of a physics breakthrough of nobel prize winning proportions we are stuck trying to store the energy and then releasing it in a fast controlled manner.
Does this have the possibility of driving my truck? I mean if the carbo cell has been around for sixty years why has no-one investigated it's use in such an application.
I heard a along time ago there was a scientist that had found a way to use water to power a combustable engine. The motor would get some where around 150 MPG if not more. Then one day this man came home only to find that his entire experiment had been confiscated. All of the records of the work. The plans. Every thing. It was a very clean job. A single trace of a clue as to who may have done it was never found.
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Well, whatever you are going to grow to produce the energy, plants, algae, etc requires the sun. So your suggestion is good, except we've already cut out the middleman (algae, etc) and by just using solar panels.
:)
No moving parts, quiet, and you don't have to water them.
...if we fed it 'shroom!
tdawg
guess who's a stoner....
You can kill the revolutionary but you can't kill the revolution
Isn't this similar to "The Matrix" where the robots live off of humans that are "batteries"? This technology is for sure the doom of mankind.
http://www.angryflower.com/alight.gif
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
Mr. Fusion :) Just need to get a robot to run on Free Beer. :)
think of sugar (or whatever fuel source is being used) as a storage mechanisim. Using solar panels are nice, but you end up having to use a bunch of batteries to store up power so it can function at night. Making a machine that can generate electricty from other sources is interesting and could possibly have very pratical results if the technology advances far enough. Batteries and solar panels are enough in certain circumstances, but creating a robot that can move for days if it can pick up a little grass (or some dirt or other fual which it knows how to break down and extract food from) along the way, it could accomplish some nice things.
Pretty soon they will gain consciousness and then realize sitting on the couch and watching tv while sucking on a jaw-breaker is the way to live. And then say good bye human race =p
...that can be locally grown?
:)
For small-scale applications, the one sugarcube in 15 minutes thing doesn't sound that bad, but if this finds wider use someday, I hope they will check into other forms of plant matter.
Then again, driving up the price of sugar might not be a bad thing...keep the kidlets from buying so much candy and the megacorps from putting so much sugar in everything.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Our culture has evolved to the point that hard records do not exist that could accurately reflect all aspects of our society. In a few years, what will be left for the future? If our society devolves to the point where our technology is lost, will the majority of our records be lost to the new age?
What if these ideas had been addressed before? What if the structures we know as the pyramids are really complex machines meant to relate information to potentially inferior future cultures?
With biological machinery, it is possible that we could develop a means for our information to live on. A computer structure that would be fueled by renewable biological life. A means of letting our descendants know who we were.
Pax Digitalia
This line alone makes this whole article pleasant to read.
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Have you ever heard of fuel cells? The basic idea is that you drive around with a car full of hydrogen at -276 C (or whatever temperature is needed to store it). A method has been developed where it can be combined with oxygen (I believe that the air is a good enough source for that) to make H2O. Anyways, the hydrogen must lose some electron(s) to combine with the oxygen. A device has been built which can capture that energy during the process. The only problem is fuel cells are incredibly expense and hydrogen must be kept really cold or it blows shit up.
I don't have any good online resources but I am sure that a search for "fuel cells" on google would turn up all sorts of things.
as far as using water for a fuel, I have a feeling that it is nothing more than a myth. But if you heard that water was the waste produced by the car, then here is your answer =)
Great, you know what this means. The robots are going to be competing for a valuable resource. Soon they are going to be killing us for Pepsi...the choice of a new generation... of robots....
....
According to my calculations, we have twenty four hours before the robots turn against their masters with the blood and the screaming and the hurting
I had a feeling you were going to say that.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
Hum, if I give it beans, will it fart??? Just askin' !!!
Yeah, they're in Hawaii ;-P
Ants love wet sugar! Imagine robotic ants? :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Wouldn't "Constipated Mechanical Berserkers" be a cool name for a band?
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
Ok, it works a bit better if you imagine the professor from Futurama saying that...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Where is the poo poo?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have a robot that can run on hot grits alone! The bot has its grits poured down its pants, and then it starts first posting on slashdot. THE WONDERS OF SCIENCE!
I blame the schools.
M0571y H@rml355.
Though the underlying mechanism is different, if this type of thing were made more efficient, wouldn't it be possible to dump a bunch of potato peelings, fat trimmings from the roast, moldy bread and apple cores into the "Mr. Garbage Disposal" on the back of your electrically-powered moped?
I know there's a car that already runs on used fryer grease, but there are a lot of apple cores, potato peelings and bags of moldy bread out there, too...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Nothing new here. Slashdot ran a story a while back about a slug hunting robot that is powered by digesting the slugs it catches.
www.matthewmiller.net
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
This is a wonderful first step. The limiting factor is the fact that the conversion from releasing electrons to charging a battery is a) slow and b) inefficient. What the robot is doing is essentially interupting the formation of ATP in a biological cell, and taking the electrons that would be used to charge a battery. In the near future, I would imagine that the battery can be dispensed with, and instead the "stomach" itself could be used as the battery. The concept would work something like this:
a) when cells digest carbohydrates, they eventually transport electrons outside of the cell membrane. This can be extended to transport them outside a larger, non-ionic membrane. This creates a charge difference.
b) A circuit could be constructed with the + end outside the cell, the - end inside, and voila, a working circuit which runs directly from the electron transport chain.
A bit heavy in Biology/Chemistry, but there you go (I'm a chemist at heart)
hmmmm?
the gastrobots have been built without the ability to defecate
Does that mean they're full of sh*t?
Maybe we should send them to Uranus?
Bye bye, Karma!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
SlugBot, the Slug-Powered Slug-Hunting Robot
Donate free food to the hungry at The Hunger site.
By the way, where does it say "one cube of sugar lasts for 15 minutes" in the article? All it says is that it uses cube sugar for fuel, and "Chew Chew's sugar high lasts only 15 minutes at best"... It sounds to be more than only one cube.
Donate free food to the hungry at The Hunger site.
Well, with less and less consumming electronic components (ARM, Transmeta,etc.) it could be a cool idea to have sugar powered-laptops or embedded devices.
It would be quite useful in areas where powering (either electrical or solar) and access to the devices would be difficult.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
HAL-9000: Dave, give-me-some-sugar-baby.
Dave: NOOOOO00000ooooooooooooooo.............
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I'm a student at USF, working towards a CS degree. I've seen the engineering guys do some pretty cool stuff: not long ago I saw a couple guys outside one of the buildings testing out a robot that ran on some wireless controls through a Linux app.
And then there's the garage of solar vehicles...The roof is covered in solar panels, and the cars can all plug in to recharge there. Pretty neat stuff, there was even a picture of it published in one of my textbooks last semester.
If we let you have your wicked way with it, it's going develop diabetes, and then where will we be?
Salocin.com
My immediate reaction after reading this article was not to create some sort of killer robot that would slash humans to death in an attempt to rule the world, akin to the Terminator movie, but to use this technology to power the Sony Aibo. It would make it even more realistic in replicating "dog behaviour" than it is now because it would eat and poop!
Maybe we can train these SOBs to eat plastic or trash or something?
Now only if it can be done for Lawyers (redundant, I'm sure, but still)
Editor: So far?
Stuart: (evil grin) It can't catch meat... so far...
Editor: D-do you mind if I cut that part? You promised me you were going to stop saying that!
Stuart: (wringing hands) Yeeeeeeessss... cut that part... my robots will cut that part... MWA HA HA HA HA!!!!
Imagine a machine with a miniaturized, balanced eco-system on board,
[...]
They would be low powered machines[...]
Like The Matrix?
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
This article has a glaring inaccuracy, stating that the engineeer was at University of Southern Florida, and not Univerversity of South Florida as is the case. I'm looking at the picture saying "That looks alot like the concrete bench I outside the ENA building I took a header off while rollerblading" when I noticed that the picture did say South Florida accross the side. Geez, my alma matter never gets any credit.
BryTech: What on Earth was that, Edgar?
Edgar: Sugar.
Tech: I've never seen Sugar do that.
Edgar: Give me........Sugar.
The tech hands the Robot a bag of Domino Sugar.
Edgar: In Cubes.
The tech opens a drawer, and gives Edgar a cube of sugar.
Edgar: More.
The tech tilts the bag, giving the robot several cubes of sugar.
Edgar: More.
The tech tilts the bag farther, feeding a few more sugar cubes into the robot.
Edgar: Nnggggttttthhhhh.
The tech pours the entire contents of the sugar cube bag into the robot. The robot exits the office, probably off to capture the galaxy.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
I want to install one of these in my DeLorean.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
USF (the logo so prominent on the side of the gastrobot's lead wagon) is the University of South Florida, not Florida Southern. Florida Southern University is a Baptist University that mostly trains preachers, not build robots.
Hey! That's not a sugar cube, it's people. Oh my God, it's people. Gastrobot runs on people! It's peeeeeepollllllllll!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I seem to recall that there was a machine designed to actually consume morons in the USA. The theory being that this machine would live in a big stone building and hunt the morons down. Once it found them, it would tie them up, and slowly eat them from the inside out, using their decomposing wallets as fuel. IIRC, that machine was called something like the "Civil Justice System" or something.
If this robot could be modified to feed on cat feces, urine and furballs, I could kill 2 birds with one stone: clean up the mess they make, and save myself a lot of nasty work. Of course if it fed on cats, my problems would be gone forever.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
If it farts it's an animal ...
Collect them all, take over the world.
aÍÍ©ÍÌÍ£Ì'̽ͩÌÍzÍYÌÍÌY
D'oh! .sig. (well, nearly doubled, anyway). that's what I get for not previewing.
.sig.
sorry 'bout the doubled
--Moss
This is a
Now there are two of them.
--Moss
This is a
Now there are two of them.
There are two _____.
...he'll have to get over his "are my thighs too big" complex?
Whatta disaster!
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
acknowledges that more oomph can be extracted from animal flesh than plant matter
Can some biology student please explain if this is true? I dont know if I agree - wouldnt the highest energy content in food be found in something other than animal flesh? That material may not be Sugar but could it be something like peanut butter (nuts of some kind) or something else?
I understood, one of the major arguments of vegetarians is reducing ones ecological footprint. Meaning that not eating animal flesh means that you require less area to grow enough food to sustain yourself. Ie. It takes 100 acres to grow 5 cows wich can feed 10 people for one year vs 100 acres to grow XXX bushels of corn with can feed 100 people for on year. This would seem to violate this idea by saying that you can achieve greater concentrations of 'energy' in animal flesh -- then the anology above would not be true.
Can someone please explain...?
Feed it salsa, and then see if it produces methane and endures a gas leak! It would be the first robot to fart! Now there's a true leap for science!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Or, will you have to race the robot for that M&M you dropped?
in Germany there are a few gas stations that serve hydrogen as fuel for BMW and Mercedez cars sorry, no link, but I read about in a recent BMW publication.
No sig here...
A robot that runs on organic matter?!?!
GREAT!!! now we know what to do with the homeless!
Duncan
Can somebody tell me what the power output of something like this is?
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
That's right, coming to a movie theater near you: C.R.U.D - Cannibalistic Robotic Underground Dwellers!
Who says they don't eat meat?
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
Ahhh... sugar. Is there anything it can't do?
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
I was right!
So who is best, me or the linux geek that moderated me?
Me of course!
--------------- Delete Windows before you mail me