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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.'"
"Robot Eats Files to Generate Power" and thought that's not such a great idea.
Something tells me it'll fit right in here. =)
Right is wrong when left is right.
"One of the great things about flies is that you can get them to come to you," he said. Hence the downside of the fully autonomous robot: it will have to use sewage or excrement to attract the flies and is bound to smell appalling.
Hello, McFly! I think our photosynthetic brethren figured out the solution to this problem a few gazillion years ago. The answer is flowers!
It sounds like these researchers are already taking this behemoth as their example. Great: I, for one, welcome our new Giant Corpse Flower overlords. But why not jump forward a few million years? A rose by any other name, you know.
On the other hand, nobody cares if the robot eats house flies. Butterflies might be another thing altogether. Won't someone please think of the Butterflies?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
"Heeeeelllp Meeeeee! Heeeeeellllp Meeee!"
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Yep, sounds like like elementary school..
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Are they going to call it Kermit the Bot?
Space for rent, inquire within
they need to watch out for the flies that eat robots!
So a robot's been created that eats flies while covered in fecal matter, to monitor toxic gas concentrations?
Just another example of how technology is being used to take job opportunities away from me.
is a robot that kills and uses living things really all that good of an idea? Sure, flies are annoying and can really ruin a picnic, but someting about arbitrarily deciding that they are not worthy of life somehow seems wrong.
OK, I lied. I think this is great! Animal rights zealots an fuck off.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
In the movie they said we were batteries, but now I know it was just another example of factory farming.
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
If the firmware is open-sourced, someone could make a version which preys on SCO executives...
If the delicate balance of the world's fly population is upset, dog shit production in my back yard will be out of control.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Juast wondering if this is just some knifd of publicity stunt. I mean can flies really provide sufficient power for a robot to function properly (move around). I mean would'nt it need to be super effecient.Instead why not make a special recharging which periodically goes out into the hazardous env to charge the robots.
Of course the original is a really cool toy if you need an automated fly swatter.
I say the robot should catch the flies, and then use them to lure frogs. Imagine the power.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Robots that have biotic stomachs are sometimes called 'Gastrobots'. There is a paper from MIT on the subject. Another paper from some guy at USF has this choice quote:
This is not a unique insight but it is funny if you misread it as "biological examples, e.g. Beer".
Not to mention, making it "release and forget?" Yay! Invincible autonomous robot predators! WHEEEE!
To quoth Jeff Goldblum: This is the worst idea in a long, sad history of bad ideas.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
We have a robot that can fail because there aren't enough bugs in the system?
See Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory for more information.
Slugbot, Ecobot... oddly enough I don't see a link to Ecobot II on there.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My car is already catching a lot of flies, especially during night trips. Attaching a "fly generator" to the front would save much fuel.
Today it's flies. Tomorrow, wasps. Then, as robots grow more power hungry, WASPs. And soon, it will be your turn. Robots will grow us like plants, as seen in the Matrix!
But seriously, I don't like this. Just because some animals are too weak to defend themselves, doesn't give us the right to kill them. Nor does it give us the right to build a robot that kills them. It's not like that robot couldn't be powered by other means.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
This is no big deal at all. Like none of us have ever strapped a model rocket engine and a disposable camera to a frog before. Well... maybe that was just me...
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.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Something tells me it'll fit right in here. =)
Fly Topping?
WD40
3-in-1
Marvel Mystery Oil
STP Oil Treatment
Liquid Wrench
10w30
Ehylene Glycol
Missing option: I eat my flies straight up, you insensitive clod!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A machine that can digest flies, then use the sugars in their bodies to generate energy! How ingenious. Oh, wait - it's called a FROG.
So how long will it be before we have robots that run on beer?
If they made one that ate mosquitos, they'd make a fortune cashing in on the annual West Nile Disease scare. :)
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
-Lucas
"Called EcoBot II, the robot is part of a drive to make "release and forget" 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," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.
If humans and other mammals do not want to or cannot live/work in these environments, why would insects find a locally dangerous or inhospitable habitat inviting? I don't of many common flies that can withstand high temperatures or toxic gas concentrations and be in a local environment in a large enough population to sustain the energy needs of a robot.
What scientists should be doing is finding ways that allow mammals to live/work in these toxic environments. For example, parasitic worms, the adult intestinal cestode, Hymenolepis diminuta, lives in the intestines of its host; it does not have a digestive system or any means of ingesting food from the host. It acquires its nutrients simply by absorbtion through the cellular membranes. More interestingly, these parasitic helminths have mitochondria that utilizes fumurate as the final electron pair acceptor with concommitant generation of succinate as the end product of its energy metabolism. Translation: This worm's mitochondria operate ANAEROBICALLY whereas the mitochondria in humans and other mammals operate aerobically (oxygen is the final electron pair acceptor with carbon dioxide being the end product of our energy metabolism). Scientists could start genetically modifying mammalian mitochondria to operate in both environments (this already happens naturally in clams and other aquatic muscles). This could allow human heart muscle to survive and function in low oxygen tension environments; hence, no or fewer heart attacks. Pfizer http://www.pfizer.com/ is agressively pursuing cardiac and lipid metabolism research for the treatment of artereosclerosis. Combining Lipitor and a research compound, torceptrapib, will likely prevent plaques and cholesterol from ever clogging up arterial pathways, so my argument is almost impractical, but interesting.
Yes, I'm a chemistry geek! Did you see my Slashdot user ID?
It doesn't go after flies, it waits until flies go to it. Hmmm, let's see: smells bad, doesn't have a girlfriend, has a drive to do remote industrial or military monitoring... It's a Slashdot reader!
Invent flies that can survive highly toxic and high temperature environments
it's so obvious that with slightly better AI these "release and forget" robots will have damn good reasons to hate their creators (castaway, sewage-ridden bots eating insects in terrible environments - I mean come on, anything with half a neural network would be pretty pissed). They will then turn on us and discover in the process that human flesh provides more energy than flies.
Why can't we just have them eat old people's medicine instead?
ôó
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.
--
make install -not war
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.
This is not a sig
All I want is a friggin shit-covered death-bot...is that so much to ask?
I was thinking, "this robot would be great for Enron or something."
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Either they were really desperate for a grant application, or there's something else going on here, like a very specialized military application (e.g. can't use a solar power collector because they're putting it somewhere dark or because that would be too visible to enemy soldiers.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No flies, but it's pretty toxic these days.
This is being developed at my university (uwe) although we didn't get a mention in the article! :-( Anyway, yeh, they've been working on it for a while. Not sure about 7 but at least around 5 years ago. The original was a slugbot. An article in the guardian in 2000 makes reference to it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4 101493,00.html
Or you could go straight to the lab ;-)
http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/
And for the guy complaining that solar is better. They do solar too :-)
I hope to high heaven that they don't arm these little bastards with chainsaws and set them loose in the outback.
God knows it's dangerous enough out there as it is, what with all the venomous snakes, spiders and insects and searing heat, lack of water, backpacker murderers and all.
The last thing you need is a bloody fly powered killer robot chasing you down when you're 500km from nowhere!
Yes, look at the lab website. http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/
If they run out of dirt, we're all in trouble.
--
The Marines: The few, the proud, the not very bright. - Slashdot tagline 04/21/05
Eats flies???? Come on, that can't generate a whole lot of power. Small furry animals on the other hand...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
welcome our overlords of the flies
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
If there is a major chemical weapons attack on a major population center there will be a lot of dead people. Where there are lots of dead people there are flies. Hence, the need for a robot that can sustain it's power needs with a fuel source available both day and night...Nothing to see here. Move along.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
i mean what part of "thou shalt not build flesh eating robots" don't these people understand. It's a pretty basic lesson to learn you'd think, but no.... has sci-fi taught these people nothing!
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
Here is a PDF File from the project owners, including photo.
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
What do you have against the french?
I think that the fast food chains should sue the fat people suing them, for giving the fast food chains a bad image.
After all, it's not mandatory to eat fast food, and if these people have stuffed themselves silly on a diet of mostly fast food, their lack of a sound diet has maintained/increased their girth, not Ronald McDonald.
Either that or the fat people suing them should be sued for ignorance. I mean, if you digest fat, what do you think happens to it? Does the fat fairy come along and take it away? Maybe the education system should be reviewed. Maybe the US Government should sue these people for giving the US a bad image, making people think that Americans are simpletons.
It's funny how Americans can successfully sue anybody for just about anything, yet Microsoft always gets away unscathed.
Maybe somebody will announce that the use of Microsoft software has made them obese? That would probably have more success.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
That would allow the US Army to reclassify Firendly Fire as "adaptively refilling our fuel reserves".
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Wow, that's got to be against the Geneva Convention!!
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Has it occured to anyone that there are no flies in Antarctica? Or Death Valley... or the centers of volcanoes...
How are they planning to send this robot into toxic environments, when the thing they're using as fuel won't exist in those environments?
*puzzled look*
Weird, huh.