EcoBot Eats and Poops Like a Human; Self-Sustainable Robots Are Here - nguyencreformen

A quick click through GeekTech's story archive will suggest just how realistic (and sometimes freaky) robotic technology has suit. Robots can now stupefy us in the least our favorite pastimes, carry heavy objects for days, wash hair…you name it, robots tin probably do it. Now, researchers are working on a robot that not only eats biofuel and drinks dirty irrigate, but can also excrete the thriftlessness.

EcoBot III, alias BreadBot, is a person-sustaining golem created away the Bristol Robotics Science lab in the GB. IT is not only capable of being effervescent away "nutrient" much as leaves, dirt and, well, feces, but it can also go "dope" in a litter tray like-minded a cat. Its predecessors, EcoBot I and II, would "eat" similar items, but they were unable to release the undesirable past-products.

The goal of construction a potty-trained robot thart doesn't swear on electricity is obviously bad good for the environment. However, EcoBot is really part of a larger externalize by the university to generate electricity out of urine (!) in third-macrocosm countries, using Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology. And thanks to EcoBot's ability to run through fecal matter, NASA has of course shown some interest in the project too.

Of course, EcoBot won't be taking finished the planetary with its human-like abilities just until no–after all, it is essentially just a robotic systema digestorium with no "brainiac"–but the Poster and Melinda Gates Foundation is providing funding for the project, and the project itself could help thousands of people. If prospering, the MFC technology could represent used in waste and water discussion, and help further develop robots with gills.

Check over a video of EcoBot III determination food and so elimination what it doesn't need. Want to sleep with how the robot poops? Watch BRL's clip, which tests the ability of its insides to pass the waste finished.

[Bristol Robotics Laboratory via Geekosystem]