Terrifying robot with a mouth and gut that EATS and digests living things for energy is created by British scientists
Self-sustaining robotic scavenger devours its surroundings and poos out the waste from its artificial gut
A SELF-sustaining scavenger robot that EATS living organisms and digests them in an artificial gut has been built by scientists in Bristol.
The greedy droid slurps up the water in its pool along with biomatter such as algae, which are converted to electricity in its cyborg intestines.
Digested waste matter is then expelled from the robot's bottom and the process begins again - without any need for batteries or a power cable.
The technology is in its early days but boffins hope to be able to build completely self-sufficient robots that take all their energy from their surroundings - allowing them to roam indefinitely.
The design mimics the life of salps - simple, tube-like sea creatures that have an opening each end and filter the water passing through their bodies for scraps of food.
The robot has a mouth made from soft polymer membrane which sucks in organic matter.
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In the guts are microbial fuel cells (MFCs), where the organisms are broken down by bacteria and the chemical energy released is converted into electricity.
Each MFC produces only a small amount of electricity - but several units connected in series generate enough power for the robot to expel waste products from the rear and suck in the next mouthful at the front.
Using soft material in the mouth and guts also reduces power consumption, .
Fumiya Iida, a robotics researcher from the University of Cambridge, told the magazine: “Squeezing out enough energy to be self-sustainable is the real breakthrough.”
In theory self-sustaining scavenger droids could be set to work cleaning up contaminated water after chemical or nuclear spills or hoovering up algal blooms the suffocate other marine life.
Hemma Philamore, one of the robot’s creators from the University of Bristol, said: “In the future, robots like this could be released into the ocean to collect garbage.
“What we are developing is a robot that can act naturally, in a natural environment.”
Earlier this year scientists at Harvard University unveiled a , which swims around independently fuelled by an onboard chemical reaction.
Soft robots - made without metal or hard plastic - are heralded as the future of robotics as they may able to squeeze into places where rigid machines cannot operate - potentially even inside the human body to seek out and treat disease.
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