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Tiny Aircraft Feeds Itself With Dead Flies

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the take-me-to-your-weevil dept.

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.

8 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Great Scott! by jellomizer · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well the beer had more lighter elements in it then the tin can. So by poring the the beer in it first got the fusion chain reaction warm enough to handle the can.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  2. Repeat? by ViolentGreen · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/0 8/221212&tid=216&tid=126&tid=1&tid=14

    --
    Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
  3. Re:I for one welcome... by MaynardJanKeymeulen · · Score: 2, Informative

    if you really, really must say it, do it right!

    "I for one ... OVERLORDS"

    like Kent Brockman in Deep Space Homer :
    And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.
    I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality,
    I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

    --
    "The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they make a vacuum cleaner."
  4. Wrong tense! by Glock27 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Tiny Aircraft Feeds Itself With Dead Flies

    More correctly, possibly a future robot or robotic aircraft might one day feed itself with dead flies, according to the article.

    An actual working model that's capable of flight looks to be well in the future. However, another(?) group in England is working on a someone similar design that'll eat garden slugs. That seems far more workable...

    --
    Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
    Score: -1 100% Flamebait
    1. Re:Wrong tense! by rtv · · Score: 2, Informative
      It's the same laboratory, and mostly the same people that built the SlugBot, and EcoBot 1, at the University of West England. The SlugBot never really worked: though several components were demonstrated, they couldn't generate enough juice from digesting slugs to power the arm mechanism, let alone driving the whole vehicle on soft ground.

      The EcoBot worked fine. It used a microbial fuel cell powered by suger solution to drive a very light robot base towards a light source. Simple, but a perfectly good tech demonstration.

      UWE also has experience with very low-mass autonomous blimp robots. Heavier-than-air flight is a different ballgame, so it looks like they've teamed with aero engineers at Bath to look into this.

      UWE has probably the most interesting robotics group in the UK.

      (I'm a robotics researcher, not affiliated with UWE.)

  5. great article on the prospects and efficiency of.. by TheLoneCabbage · · Score: 2, Informative

    bio fule cells

    http://www.automation.hut.fi/research/bio/sfc00p os .htm

    --
    I would rather be ashes than dust!
  6. "Tiny Aircraft Feeds Itself..." does not exist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Tiny Aircraft Feeds Itself With Dead Flies" does not exist yet. Read the article, it says they're **thinking** about it. So, it's not a "waste of beer", yet. Just talk.

  7. Re:Jigga-Watts by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 3, Informative

    Uh, look it up in a dictionary: he pronounced it right! Most people do not realize that the prefix "giga" in the English language should be pronounced "ji'ga" not "gi'ga" - at least, that is how it was until the prefix became popular with computer terms such as gigabyte and gigahertz. Now, both pronunciations are generally accepted. Wait... could that be Linguistic Darwinism???? ;)

    --
    William George