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SlugBot, the Slug-Powered Slug-Hunting Robot

Posted by Roblimo on from the gross-but-true dept.

Adam Foster writes "SlugBot is no ordinary robot. SlugBot hunts down slugs, and is powered by fermenting the slugs' corpses, producing biogas fuel. Find out more from the BBC."

4 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Salt Shaker by Gid1 · · Score: 5

    Fields of slugs being bred purely for electrical supply, harvested by robots.

    I can just imagine a little slug-hovercraft searching for the little slug known as "Neo".

  2. Evolutionary pressure... by chazR · · Score: 4

    If you deploy something like this on a large scale, you are adding an evolutionary pressure to the slug's environment. Speculating idly on how the slug's genome may respond:

    Lower their metabolic rate so they show up less well on IR, or change shape so they don't look like slugs to the robot (stealth slugs).

    Become too large for the thing to pick up (yuck)

    Develop a mechanism so their exothermic decomposition becomes *much* faster. Exploding slugs (ultra-yuck)

    There is at least one species of slug (huge brownish ones - too lazy to look up classification) that feeds primarily on other slugs. It would be interesting to do a trial to see if these could be used effectively for slug control. I'm not doing it though. Watching one slug eat another is easily the grossest thing I have ever seen.

  3. Re:Heaven forbid... by webslacker · · Score: 4

    If they ever made a powered snotbot.

  4. Re:Salt Shaker by Mithy · · Score: 4

    "I bet you wish you'd eaten the blue leaf."

    :)

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