There seems to be no limit to what a robot can do. The point is driven home hard by the EcoBot III, also called the BreadBot. This little self-sustaining robot can eat biofuel, drink dirty water and guess what? It also excretes the waste!
Ecobot III Goes Poo
The robot created by Bristol Robotics ltd in the United Kingdom is able to charge itself with food such as leaves, dirt and feces. It can also poop out unwanted by products in a litter tray like a cat. This is something that its previous models, EcoBot I and EcoBot II were unable to do.
Ioannis Ieropoulos, a roboticist at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory said that EcoBot-III is a robot that collects its own food and water from the environment. It performs the task we design it to do, and at the end of the day, it gets rid of its own waste.
EcoBot I ran on refined sugar and E. coli while EcoBot II ran in shrimp husks and dead flies using a sludge microbe generator. Now EcoBot III can run on poop. You may think it sounds disgusting but its big news!
Powering a robot usually needs electricity or batteries and this can be in short supply if you are on the International Space Station. However what about a robot that can generate power for itself by eating the station crew’s poop? It could run indefinitely if power were the only concern.
John Greenman, a microbiologist at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory said that Robots that eat biological fuels could find enough fuel almost anywhere. There is organic matter anywhere on Earth — leaves and soil in the forest, or even human waste such as urine and faeces, he added.