Clock powered by dead flies

[video link]

This prototype clock, designed by James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau, is powered by dead flies. A conveyor of fly paper catches the insects and then drops them into a microbial fuel cell where they become feedstock for bacteria to consume. As the bacteria munch on the dead flies (or most any organic matter), the chemical energy is converted to electrical energy. The same technology powers the sewage-eating robot I posted about last year and also appears in the video above. (via Daily Grail)

• [Eark_the_Bunny]

  Eh, no thank you!

• [The Unusual Suspect]

  “And the clock worked well for many years until, one day, there arose a fly named Neo…”

• [alowishus]

  How poetic.

• [Trent Hawkins]

  why don’t they just use trash?

• [eric schrepel]

  Does IBM’s Watson know about this? Hope not.

• [sockdoll]

  Couldn’t the conveyor belt’s energy source be used to power the clock, and skip the whole icky dead fly thing?

  • [Chevan]

    They say in the video that the belt’s rotation is also powered by the fuel cell.

• [Cassandra]

  I thought I posted about these, plus some more carnivorous furniture, on the Submitterator a while ago. I liked the table…

• [Anonymous]

  We are creating robots that will compete with us for food. Awesome!

  • [Anonymous]

    We are creating robots that will use resources we don’t consume. Awesome!

    Fixed.

• [Anonymous]

  Does PETA know what time is is?

  Aaron

• [Anonymous]

  Talk about analog-to-digital conversion :P

  Aaron

• [Anonymous]

  i dont like th epath this is going on…. soon that lion you saw on video will be a self replicated robot eating human beings.

  why not have it eat garbage? like mister fusion?

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    In my reality, dead flies are garbage.

• [Anonymous]

  So does the clock generate waste? Or is that a manual job for the clock owner?

• [Anonymous]

  Insects thought they were winning by vastly out-massing us silly mammals.

  Muahaha, muahahaha…

  Aaron

• [JIMWICh]

  You fools! This will surely end up in the Robot Wikipedia!

• [BikerRay]

  Scale it up and I could run my house on a few expired relatives.

• [kridje]

  and so the Matrix begins.

• [RedShirt77]

  Finally there is an advantage to sleeping in the pig barn

• [Anonymous]

  I’m going to invent a biochemical machine that is powered by flies. I’m going to call it a “frog”.

• [MichaelRN]

  Gives a new meaning to grandfather clock.

• [The Hamster King]

  “We want to get robots to turn biomass into electricity.”

  Sure, they START by only eating flies.

  But the endgame is really, really ugly … .

• [udqbpn]

  :-O

• [Mr. Winka]

  It’s a slippery slope folks. It’s bad enough I have to worry that robots will kill me Terminator style, but now I have to worry they’ll develop an appetite for my delicious biomass.

• [Anonymous]

  Solyent Green is people!

• [frankieboy]

  The dumb kids just pull the wings off them.

• [Rob Myers]

  This reminds me of that corpse-eating military robot that very quickly wasn’t, and Damien Hirst’s insect-o-cutor vitrines.

• [Anonymous]

  So this is how we are going to power zombies, cool

• [Anonymous]

  Time flies.

  • [Novel Miseries]

    “Time flies.” Obvious. So obvious, and yet so amusing. =)

    • [Anonymous]

      “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” – Groucho Marx.