This Robot Is Powered by Pee

In their still-brief history robots have, for the most part, been far removed from the organic world—they don’t exist in the realm of life and death, or hunger, food and waste. Robots’ existences are clean. They’re plugged in or recharged, and they work until they need a boost. But now some scientists are pushing to integrate robots into the rest of the food chain.

At the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, researchers are working on a robot scavenger, the EcoBot, a contraption that, one day, will hunt down its fuel—human urine—out in the field. The bot itself is a bit of a cyborg, an organic-metallic blend that uses bacteria, harnessed in microbial fuel cells, to consume human waste and convert it into electricity. Since not all of the urine can be consumed, the EcoBot, too, will produce its own waste. (Can robot-only bathrooms be far away?)

So far, the Bristol team have a robot that can move—slowly—and their fuel cell technology, running on pee, has been used to power a cell phone.

Mobile phone runs on urine power - Bristol Robotics Laboratory

Watch on

EcoBot is still a far way from cruising the streets and cleaning up after late-night revelers. But new research published today by the EcoBot team shows that progress is being made.

This isn’t the Bristol lab’s first foyer into hungry robots. Another bot, known as EATR, fed on bugs and plants, while in South Korea they’ve built a robotic venus flytrap.

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Colin Schultz | | READ MORE

Colin Schultz is a freelance science writer and editor based in Toronto, Canada. He blogs for Smart News and contributes to the American Geophysical Union. He has a B.Sc. in physical science and philosophy, and a M.A. in journalism.