A robot can convert human urine into energy.
The device is modeled after the human heart and uses smart materials called "shape memory alloys," an Institute of Physics news release reported.
The robot, dubbed EcoBot, would be able to function without the help of electricity, fuel, or batteries, by collecting waste to convert into self-sustaining energy.
Researchers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory have already created four generations of the EcoBot over the past decade. All of them have run on "electricity-generating microbial fuel cells that employ live microorganisms to digest waste organic matter and generate low-level power."
The researchers hope the robots could be used as "monitors" in areas with dangerous levels of pollution or predator threats in the future. The devices would need very little human maintenance because they have already proven to be able to convert "rotten fruit and vegetables, dead flies, waste water, sludge and human urine "rotten fruit and vegetables, dead flies, waste water, sludge and human urine," into energy.
"We speculate that in the future, urine-powered EcoBots could perform environmental monitoring tasks such as measuring temperature, humidity and air quality. A number of EcoBots could also function as a mobile, distributed sensor network," Lead author of the study Peter Walters, from the Centre for Fine Print Research, University of the West of England, said.
"In the city environment, they could re-charge using urine from urinals in public lavatories. In rural environments, liquid waste effluent could be collected from farms," he said.
Currently, motor pumps deliver the waste to the robot's fuel cells, but these have proven to be faulty.
The newest version of the device will solve that problem with a device that works like a human heart. It compresses the body of the pump to "force liquid out." The memory alloys (which have the ability to "remember" their original shape) work as "artificial muscles."
"The artificial heartbeat is mechanically simpler than a conventional electric motor-driven pump by virtue of the fact that it employs artificial muscle fibres to create the pumping action, rather than an electric motor, which is by comparison a more complex mechanical assembly,"Walters said.
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