Go, Diarrhea Bot! Wednesday, Jul 21 2010
The “Chron”, as my grandfather likes to call it (SF Chronicle) has picked up the exciting robot story of the hour… diarrhea-bot, as its creators have affectionately nicknamed it. Here’s the summary from the original press release:
(PhysOrg.com) — UK researchers have developed an autonomous robot with an artificial gut that enables it to fuel itself by eating and excreting. The robot is the first bot powered by biomass to be demonstrated operating without assistance for several days. Being self-sustaining would enable robots of the future to function unaided for long periods.
The robot, the Ecobot III, was developed by researchers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and will be presented at the Artificial Life conference in Denmark in August. The robot eats meals of partially processed sewage, using the nutrients within the mash for fuel and excreting the remains. It also drinks water to maintain power generation.
The robot navigates towards a dispenser filled with the nutrient-rich mixture and “eats” what it needs. The meal is then processed in the robot’s body by bacteria held in a stack of two tiers, each with 24 microbial fuel cells (MFCs).
And, the “money quote”:
Director of Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Chris Melhuish, said MFCs had been tried before but an artificial gut was needed to solve the problem of previous models, which was that humans had to clean up the waste left by bacterial digestion. Melhuish said the robot was called Ecobot III, but admitted “diarrhea-bot would be more appropriate, as it’s not exactly knocking out rabbit pellets.”
I kid, but I really think this is a terribly important milestone. It’s only a matter of time until we build indefinitely autonomous robots, and from there, to indefinitely autonomous self-replicating robots. They will have few natural predators because they will lack meat, though some robots may eventually synthesize artificial muscles out of organics. Hopefully, molecular nanotechnology would be required before journeying too far down this pathway.
How much more energetic autonomy (and otherwise) will be required before pundits take the issue seriously, instead of treating it like a joke?
The first application….a lawnbot.
Well this is really just moving towards a cyborgian kind of situation – part machine, part organic. Also if the robots “eat” sewage then they could live in symbiosis with the rest of civilization. However, dining on sewage probably limits the usage to agricultural applications, otherwise public health issues could arise.
A more likely scenario is to have robots eating grass, but the trouble for herbivores is that vegetation is a low energy food, so you need to spend virtually all of your time eating to obtain sufficient energy.
The most practical route to energy autonomy I think is going to be solar power. Here you’re obtaining energy in the most direct way possible, rather than having it filter through plants or animals with consequent losses. BEAM robots are an early example of robotic energy autonomy, and I still have one of these working after about 15 years.
Thanks Bob, great to hear your pro opinion. In the jungle there is a high availability of fruits and stuff like that. Presumably robots could eventually be taught to set snares, just like mountain men do. :) They could also fish.
In the nearer term, though, yeah, solar sounds most realistic for increasing autonomy…
Although the research path is very worthwhile at least in itself if not for the great potential it has as it could turn up with some less expected applications (an artificial gut to replace damaged human ones or to help colon cancer treated patients, waste waters treatment etc.), this type of autonomous bot don’t think will never out-compete one witch runs on eccentricity because of the disadvantages it borrows from other autonomous system we know – our bodies. It’s like building an AI with the same memory flaws a human brain has.
Runs on eccentricity…..I like that, it’s fitting =)
Didn’t the US Army or DARPA release a statement on their plans to create autonomous robots that feed off “battlefield refuse”, aka dead bodies? Seems to be a more dystopian application of robotic self-autonomy. Unfortunate.