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.

Comments

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.