14 DAY TRIAL // Keeping a close eye on polluted areas is not a very easy thing to do, especially in regions where the built-up of contaminants in the environment is so great that people would do best to keep away.
Luckily, a bunch of scientists at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory are working on developing so-called EcoBots which, they say, can successfully perform this task and others of the kind.
The brainiacs have thus far rolled out four generations of EcoBots, which run on human pee, waste water, rotten fruit and veggies, and even dead flies.
“We speculate that in the future, urine-powered EcoBots could perform environmental monitoring tasks such as measuring temperature, humidity and air quality,” says researcher Peter Walters with the University of West England, as cited by Science News.
“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 details.
Just recently, the researchers also developed a so-called artificial heart for these robots, which they say does as amazing job at pumping waste into the EcoBots and thus helping them stay “alive.”