Design student James Auger has built a robotic digital clock that draws its energy from common house flies that it traps and “consumes.” It’s a simple design: unsuspecting insects get ensnared on a sticky conveyer belt (basically mechanized fly paper). The conveyer belt then draws the insect down towards a blade which scrapes the catch into a Microbial Fuel Cell (MCF) where the fly carcass is slowly digested by bacteria, creating a steady stream of chemical energy to power the clock’s LCD and tiny motor (see the video below).
To summarize: science has produced a self-sustaining robot that is designed to trap, kill, and consume living creatures for energy. As far as flies are concerned, the robot apocalypse has already begun.
This meat-eating roboclock design was inspired by previous work from the Bristol Robotics Lab, which has developed MFCs to extract electricity from bacteria as they breakdown various forms of biomasseverything from unrefined sugars to fruits to insects.
The killer clock, however, represents a new evolution in carnivorous hardware. Unlike the Bristol bots, which needed to be fed by researchers, the clock can feed and sustain itself.
Overall, this form of renewable, fossil fuelfree tech will probably prove to be a good thing. As robot motor skills improve, we can expect to see all manner of self-powering bots that will hunt, kill, and consume creatures that humans consider “pests.” Besides, I can’t think of any reason why this may cause a problem down the road, can you?