Robot Eats Flies to Generate Power

ms47 writes "Interesting little story over at MSNBC today about 'robots that can be sent into dangerous or inhospitable areas to carry our remote industrial or military monitoring of, say, temperature or toxic gas concentrations.' The neat part is it's powered by 'catching flies and digesting them in special fuel cells.'"

Comments

No need to smell like shit...

[Pinkoir]

Why not try attracting mosquitos or something. I can't spend 5 minutes outside without 50 or so lunging for my sweet succulent veins. Just get the robot to be warmer than the environment and smell like a sweaty human. Only slightly less offensive than shit I admit but an improvement none-the-less.

-Pinkoir

Flies have been used before

[fiannaFailMan]

Where I'm from, on the shores of Lough Neagh, there are a gazzilion flies out in the air every night. They look like columns of smoke, so thick is the sky with them. Well a long time ago, an enterprising farmer laid very fine fishing nets down on the fields by the Lough shore. The flies that died and landed on them were all gathered up and used as fertiliser. His fields that year yeilded 50% more hay than normal. So there you go.

Re:It can't just be me

[penguinoid]

SURELY these scientists have seen enough movies to realize that making a farking CARNIVOROUS robot is a bad, bad, BAD idea.

How about a robot that eats fish? Now we just need to tweek a few settings, and it might be able to catch even bigger "fish"

human powered

[Doc Ruby]

Once they get the taste for flesh, there's no going back. Humans and machines have coexisted for centuries on this planet, so long as there was no direct competition for resources. Now the symbiosis is over, and the machines are in the driver's seat. We're on the menu.

Re:Asimov, and Content...

[delibes]

Yes, it's called "... That Thou Art Mindful of Him" and the robots are small birds designed to eat insect pests from crop fields. They are conceived by two other robots (JG models George Nine and Ten) as a means of ensuring the future success of the United States Robotics and Mechanical Men Company.

More interesting is how Asimov tests his three laws in this story. The George robots aren't concerned with physical appearances (hence robo-birds). Therefore they decide humans are really evaluated based on their minds and character. Since they worked out a way to save the US Robotics company and ensure a nice future partnership between humans and robots, they decide they are smarter than normal humans, and thus in fact actually are humans and superior ones at that. Oops.

Re:I'm not so sure.

[hey!]

I once held my breath & walked around for a bit. The mosquitos still found me.

Because you're outgassing a suculent (to a mosquito) odor from your skin. It isn't just CO2, but compounds like octenol. Some genera are more strongly attracted to some compounds than others. Aedes and Ochlerotatus mosquitoes are particularly attracted to CO2, or so some of my entomological geek friends say.

Once they get close, mosquitoes are phototropic as well. Since they can see in the ifrared range, you're also like a walking lightbulb.

The way people seem to attract mosquitoes probably depends on two things: their skin sensitivity (sensitive people notice more) and their metabolic rate (which affects how smelly and bright they appear to the mosquito).

Trust me, I know too much about this stuff.