a robot running on biological lifeforms

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smoking revolver
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And you thought that Matrix was improbable?

British scientists are developing a robot that will generate its own power by eating flies.

The idea is to produce electricity by catching flies and digesting them in special fuel cells that will break down sugar in the insects' skeletons and release electrons that will drive an electric current.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5941187/

"Called EcoBot II, the robot is part of a drive to make "release and forget" robots that can be sent into dangerous or inhospitable areas to carry our remote industrial or military monitoring of, say, temperature or toxic gas concentrations
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So why not design a "release and forget" combat robot? :eek:
Send in a bunch of those in the Congo jungle to fight despotic leaders and cannibals.
 
Well, you could send out a cannibal combat robot, using humans for fuel...:D

But anyway, I think that is a neat idea, not only on combat issues. You could make a very humanlike robot, an android that not only looks and behaves like a human but even eats like one. Making it independent for a great part. Not bad. And you could make it eat "untasty" things, like the spiders hanging around in your house or the rats in the cellar...

Can I have a computer that uses crap (or some other cheap material, like insects) for fuel? :D
 
Of course you can. Just get yourself a biomass powered generator. They use it in some parts of South America.
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Imagine a scene ->
It is dusk, sun is on its low shining the last rays over quiet jungle. Trees are whispering in small breeze a lone hunter with a spear is looking for dinner and then as from nowhere through the jungle slowly rolls a machine made of metal coloured in camouflage colours. Its infrared monitors have detected the human some 40 minutes prior to contact.
Then, using pneumatic spear gun or a sharp razor hand SLASH
and in the last moments of daylight we see a robot leaning over a corpse slowly ingesting the fallen flesh and powering its batteries with a satisfied hummm.
 
Wouldn't it be better to create a machine that uses vegetable matter instead of animal flesh. No more lawn mowing, drive your car to work and put it out to graze on the local oval. But this is sort of done with ethanol fuels.
The eating machine would also have to drop a turd or two, let hope it can be house trained :) I feel that its shit will be as bad as any.
 
As usual, Isaac got there first. In That Thou Art Mindful Of Him (1974) he postulated a bird-type robot that did nothing but eat flies for pest control, and he highlighted the ecological benefits, since unlike pesticides the robo-bird would not affect the environment, since when there are no flies it does nothing; it doesn't move to other prey, it doesn't overpopulate, it just sits there. Meanwhile the flies simply have another predator for their evolution to try and solve.

In answer to Blindman, well, there is one obvious reason not to make "veggiebots". It's no accident that herbivores tend to be larger, slower, relatively inactive creatures - you simply can't get the same energy out of leaves and grass that you can out of meat!
 
you simply can't get the same energy out of leaves and grass that you can out of meat!
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And you expend a lot more energy and computing power through catching flies than through sneaking up on a carrot...
 
There's also this robot. It's pretty cool what scientists can put together.

The robotic drawing arm operates based on the neural activity of a few thousand rat neurons placed in a special petri dish that keeps the cells alive.
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wouldn't a robot use more energy catching flies than he'd get from eating them? how about small rodents or something? if it's batteries are low, it hibernates and sets out a mousetrap like thing, along comes a big, fat rat and SNAP!!! dinner. robot's up and fit for duty the next morning, fur hanging out of it's little metal mouth!
 
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