Powering bots with our own poop? Is that some science fiction we're ready for? Apparently so. Because, the latest version of the EcoBot will eat our poop to power itself.

The EcoBot is an energetically autonomous robot that powers itself by consuming waste matter. Its now on to its third generation, and the original used to run on refined sugar with an E.coli engine and the second on shrimp husks and dead flies using a sludge microbe genertor. At least, the third iteration, will have a source of power that is daily. Poop! Check it out:



The EcoBot will be able to operate for up to seven days at a time, of which it will be collecting fuel and water from an area and running it through a series of 48 Microbial Fuel cells.

"Robots that eat biological fuels could find enough fuel almost anywhere," said John Greenman, a microbiologist at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory where the robots are being developed. "There is organic matter anywhere on Earth - leaves and soil in the forest, or even human waste such as urine and feces."

If these innovations can work well in bots, what more in the daily tech that we have, take cars for example.

"We know MFCs will last as long as they're fed; there's nothing mechanical to go wrong with them," Greenman told InnovationNewsDaily. "They could go 20 or 30 years. As long as the microbes grow, they can keep going."

Oh the potential! [Technabob - Geekosystem - Scientific American - Wikipedia]