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BEWARE: a hungry, flesh-eating robot called Chew Chew could have designs on
you. Not that you won’t hear the beast coming: Chew Chew is a 12-wheeled monster
that looks more like a train. But he’s also the first robot to be completely
powered by food. He’s called a gastrobot—and he is set to make his public
debut in August, at a robotics conference in Hawaii.

Chew Chew’s “stomach” is a microbial fuel cell (MFC), a device that enslaves
a population of bacteria, in this case E. coli, to break down food and
convert chemical energy into electricity. The ideal fuel, in terms of energy
gain, is meat, says inventor Stuart Wilkinson of the University of South Florida
in Tampa. “Vegetation is not nearly as nutritious,” he explains. But eating meat
requires you to catch it first and that, in turn, requires a lot of extra energy
and complex behaviours, he says.

Early applications for gastrobots are likely to include mowing
lawns—and grazing on grass clippings for fuel. The long-term idea is to
develop autonomous robots that can feed themselves, says Wilkinson.

The robot consists of three wheeled wagons, each about a metre long. For
convenience, says Wilkinson, Chew Chew only eats sugar cubes at the moment
because these are almost entirely broken down by the microbes, producing
virtually no waste.

The microbes produce enzymes that break down carbohydrates. “Every time you
break a large molecule like glucose into smaller molecules you release
electrons,” he says. These electrons are harnessed to charge a battery by a
reduction and oxidation (redox) reaction. Wilkinson says this is analogous to
blood supply and respiration in a mammal—but delivering electrons instead
of oxygen.

Although Chew Chew doesn’t produce much in the way of waste—just carbon
dioxide and water—it would produce more if it ate vegetation or meat, says
Wilkinson.

“At the moment,” says Wilkinson, “we have to feed it like a baby because it
doesn’t have any arms or legs.” In fact, as robots go, Chew Chew is a bit of an
underachiever. The MFC does not produce enough power to move it, so instead the
electricity is used to charge its batteries. Only when the batteries are fully
charged does the robot have enough power to move forward. When the batteries are
drained, the cycle repeats itself.

“Turning food into electricity isn’t unique,” he says. “What I’ve done is
make it small enough to fit into a robot.”

Wilkinson says the gastrobot also differs from other projects, such as the
slug-eating robot being developed at the University of the West of England in
Bristol, because it does its digestion on-board. This makes a lot more sense in
terms of energy efficiency than shuttling back and forth between your quarry and
the MFC.

Chris Melhuish of the slugbot team says that the potential is there to use
this sort of technology for vehicles, but it’s a long way off. “The energy
demands would be huge to run a train or even a small car,” he says. Perhaps it
would be more practical to build an underwater robot. “If a robot fish could be
built then it would make more sense to build a robot which ate fish and
monitored beaches for sharks.” But Wilkinson doesn’t think it’s good to give
gastrobots a taste for meat. “Otherwise they’ll notice there’s an awful lot of
humans running around and try to eat them,” he warns.