Things to Do for Robots - Robots Unlimited: Life in a Virtual Age - page 276

But apart from these safety checks, the da Vinci System is not au-
tonomous and independent—it mostly does not have a mind of its own,
even an artificial one. So for the time being the robot works as the
slave of its human master. But inevitably some of the technologies de-
scribed in earlier chapters will begin to make themselves felt in robotic
surgery. Intelligent vision technology, with the help of expert systems
and knowledge-bases of past cases, will enable future generations of sur-
gical robots to recognize exactly what is wrong with a damaged artery or
organ and to fix the problem without human assistance.
Gastrobots
Robots need power to run their computers, their radio and navigation
systems, their cameras, sensors and motors. All of these consume elec-
tricity, which is fine so long as the robot can be connected to a regular
mains supply or have its batteries recharged when necessary (or recharge
them itself ). But in many environments such sources of power are not
available, and for robots to be effective for long periods of time when
they are far from a recharging base it is therefore necessary for scientists
to devise alternative sources of robot power, sources that the robot itself
can replenish from its surroundings. Hence the idea of gastrobots —robots
that eat and then convert the energy from their food into electrical power.
Gastrobots were first conceived in 1996 in Florida, where a robotics
professsor, Stuart Wilkinson, realised that the energetics that form part
of the process of brewing could be applied to provide power for robots.
Wilkinson's original idea was to feed yeast with sugars, resulting in the
production of carbon dioxide and alcohol, and then to use the pressure of
the carbon dioxide to turn a robot's wheels, thereby producing electrical
energy. He called this idea the “flatulence engine”. Since sugar exists
naturally in all vegetation, a robot that could keep its fermentation unit
fed with vegetation would have no more need to worry about power than
would a goat.
The University of Southern Florida's Gastrobotics Group, which
Wilkinson heads, called their first gastrobot Chew Chew because it look-
ed like a train (see Figure 55 ) . Chew Chew lived on sugar cubes and was
powered by biologically-produced electricity, created in cells called mi-
10 Dr. Stuart Wilkinson is at the Mechanical Engineering Department, University of South
Florida.