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Comments: 197 +-   Carnivorous Clock Eats Bugs on Tuesday June 30, @11:37AM

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday June 30, @11:37AM
from the little-office-of-horrors dept.
technology
Designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau have created a clock that is powered by "eating" bugs. The clock traps insects on flypaper stretched across a roller system and then drops them into a vat of bacteria. The insects are then "digested" and the ensuing chemical reaction is transformed into power that keeps the rollers moving and the LCD clock working. The two offer another version that is powered by mice and an even cooler machine that picks insect fuel from spiderwebs with the help of a robotic arm and a video camera.

*

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  • Bugs? (Score:4, Funny)

    by bluesatin (1350681) on Tuesday June 30, @11:39AM (#28530297)
    I won't be buying a first generation one of these, it's bound to have a tonne of bugs.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by SSgt. Lagface (1588425)

      I won't be buying a first generation one of these, it's bound to have a tonne of bugs.

      Hopefully later generations will have more. My question is, how many bugs will it take to run that thing? I don't know how much power you'd get per bug, but I wouldn't be surprised if it really needed a ton of bugs to keep that thing up for a while.

    • I know it's a joke, but isn't there really an actual glitch? How consistently can you "drop" something off of flypaper? Isn't the point of flypaper to trap the insects so that they DON'T easily come off?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Brandee07 (964634)
        It has a scraper to scrape the bugs off of the paper and into the bug-digesting compartment. I guess that would be the stomach?

          • Re:Bugs? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by ElectricRook (264648) on Tuesday June 30, @03:09PM (#28533955)

            Oil on plastic works as fly-paper. Once the fly touches the oil, it cannot fly. It starts to squirm until a wing touches, then it ain't going anywhere. Soapy water works too.

            A neighbor attached a 10 inch glass disk to an old style computer box fan, and it turned about 15 RPM. He positioned the disk so that it dipped into a half plastic milk carton of vegetable oil. A lamp was positioned to shine on the glass. On the first night, the tank was completely full of bugs (mostly moths), and it looked like mud.

            What I want to know, is the details of the digester, what is the reaction that produces electricity. How do I make that part?

          • Yes... but a scraper that scrapes bugs off the flypaper would also scrape the glue off the fly paper, rendering it pretty useless, right?

            That's why your scraper uses an edge made of pure anti-protons. Absolutely pure!

    • Re:Bugs? (Score:5, Funny)

      by hargrand (1301911) on Tuesday June 30, @12:56PM (#28531943)

      Not only that, if this catches on, it'll just be a matter of time before we start running out of bugs in the US and have to start relying on foriegn sources of bugs.

  • have an order (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30, @11:39AM (#28530329)

    Could i please have house alarm from same company please?

  • Cool For now. (Score:5, Funny)

    by jellomizer (103300) on Tuesday June 30, @11:42AM (#28530389)

    Until people start hacking these and needs more power. Then starts going for human flesh.

  • It's one small step from a bug... (Score:3, Funny)

    by nasor (690345) on Tuesday June 30, @11:45AM (#28530457)
    ...to your laser-blasted skeleton.

  • Prayer for Vista? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mordors9 (665662) on Tuesday June 30, @11:46AM (#28530485)
    Any chance of Microsoft getting a version that would eat the bugs in VIsta? okay someone was going to say it...

  • Does this have any practical applications, or is it just neat?

    • Re:Applications (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bryan Gividen (739949) on Tuesday June 30, @11:52AM (#28530639)
      I think the practical application is that it gets rid of bugs and it tells the time.
    • You know all those flies that are always buzzing around you, landing briefly on your Cheeto-stained fingers? Now they can help you tell time!

    • The piratical application involves man sized recepticals and a sign that "Get off my lawn! Trespassers will used to tell time!"

      • Re:Applications (Score:4, Funny)

        by SEWilco (27983) on Tuesday June 30, @12:30PM (#28531491) Homepage Journal

        The piratical application involves man sized recepticals and a sign that "Get off my lawn! Trespassers will used to tell time!"

        No, the piratical application involves ship-sized receptacles, cutlasses, and ropes to fetch fuel.

  • Oh sure... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kevinNCSU (1531307) on Tuesday June 30, @11:50AM (#28530569)
    Oh sure, everyone's in favor of bug powered clocks, but as soon as you put a pedestrian catcher on the front of your electric SUV to make city driving more efficient then OHHhhh, suddenly you've gone too far!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by 2obvious4u (871996)

      I so wanted to spend a mod point on this, since I have them to give away....

      However, you joke of pedestrians, what about a more "realistic" road kill or still funny but more likely to be "true" cat and dog catcher?

  • Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DaMattster (977781) on Tuesday June 30, @11:52AM (#28530625)
    I'd love to take one of these to Alaska in the spring into the early summertime. With the number of mosquitoes living there, I'll bet enough current could be generated to do something more than just power a clock. Mosquitoes in Alaska have been known to be so voracious as to kill a moose that happens upon a swarm. Imagine what millions of these pests could do with this system - bake a chicken or turkey or even provide enough electricity to power a small cabin.

  • Ethical Treatment of Flies (Score:5, Funny)

    by ChienAndalu (1293930) on Tuesday June 30, @11:55AM (#28530695)

    Nice to see that PETA [petacatalog.org] is already all over this.

    These bloodthirsty, gut-wrenching robots, designed by UK-based designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau thrive on killing and liquidizing flies and mice, whilst serving the purpose of⦠well, not much at all really.

    They even have their own vision [petacatalog.org] of insect disposal.

    I wonder if they target antibacterial soap and penicillin next...

    • Damn it first link should be this one [engadget.com].

    • Re:Ethical Treatment of Flies (Score:4, Funny)

      by bluefoxlucid (723572) on Tuesday June 30, @12:07PM (#28530995) Journal

      The universe is hostile, so impersonal; devour to survive, so it is, so it's always been.

      The more PETA irritates me, the more I want to hang dead animals by their necks outside their headquarters at night. And I'm starting to feel encouraged to hang not-quite-dead things that are still wriggling... I used to really like animals....

    • Re:Ethical Treatment of Flies (Score:5, Insightful)

      by oldspewey (1303305) on Tuesday June 30, @12:12PM (#28531115)
      I'm of the general opinion that if you manage to piss off PETA, you know you're doing something right.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Bugs42 (788576)
          Ok, normally I don't feed the trolls but I've got nothing better to do while my code compiles:

          One of the most profound insights into the nature of human existence was the Milgram Experiment [wikipedia.org]. Basically, most people don't have an internal moral compass: they don't have any inherent aversion to inflicting pain, suffering, and death on others.

          Wrong. Even though the participants in the Milgram experiment complied, they all raised questions about it. Clearly they recognized it as wrong - the findings only say that we, as a species, will submit to authority, NOT that we lack a moral compass.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by oldspewey (1303305)
          It isn't so much that I enjoy inflicting suffering on animals ... it's more that I think PETA are a bunch of total fucking nutjobs who wilfully spread misinformation and engage in various truly obnoxious forms of activism.

    • I personally think Maddox's ideas for stopping Peta are the way forward. http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=sponsor [thebestpag...iverse.net]

  • Wow. (Score:5, Informative)

    by FlyingSquidStudios (1031284) on Tuesday June 30, @11:58AM (#28530757) Homepage
    Talk about a nested series of links. I had to go through 3 separate sites- Slashdot, Endgadget, and Hack-a-Day, one linked to the other, until I got to the original New Scientist gallery photos which had many more interesting robot pictures. Oh, and the end link wasn't to page 1 of the photo gallery and the links weren't obvious each time either. For those who don't want to go the long way around, here is the original link. [newscientist.com]

  • How about linking to the actual source (Score:5, Informative)

    by weave (48069) * on Tuesday June 30, @11:59AM (#28530813) Journal

    Instead of linking to a blog that talks about another blog that refers to and links to the original story, why not just link to the original source to save us from 5 click throughs and give the original authors credit as well?

    Original story: Domestic robots with a taste for flesh [newscientist.com]

    • Instead of linking to a blog that talks about another blog that refers to and links to the original story, why not just link to the original source to save us from 5 click throughs and give the original authors credit as well?

      Because slashdot is a website that is powered by these clicks. Each time you click on a hyperlink your mouse generates 1 joule of energy that gets faxed to the slashdot server farm using the technology patented by Dilbert.

  • Druuge ships, Star Control II.

  • it occurs to me that there is a minor flaw in powering a robot clock on household pests- namely that the goal of a pest-eating device is to rid you of said pests. Once it eats all the flies, the clock stops working... so you have to encourage more flies. Or mice in the case of the mouse-eater. That sounds like it might have a down side.

    • No problem. Separate the power generation component from the clock mechanism and put it outside with the cows!

  • More direct link, more details, related contraptions (eats mice!): http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn17367-carnivorous-domestic-entertainment-robots/1 [newscientist.com]

  • always a catch (Score:5, Informative)

    by iroll (717924) on Tuesday June 30, @12:21PM (#28531313)

    I figured it was too good to be true:

    Although, for now, the robots rely on mains power [newscientist.com], Auger believes they could become truly self-sufficient.

    I like technology-as-art projects, but it'd be much cooler if these things actually *were* powered by bug juice--that is, more like bug powered 75% of the time, with a battery backup or a solar panel (or both) for those days when all the flies have already been eaten--rather than just being combination clock-and-bug-zappers. I'd be interested to see their average power production vs. power consumption.

  • Needs mobility (Score:4, Informative)

    by Spy Handler (822350) on Tuesday June 30, @12:25PM (#28531373) Homepage Journal
    This is nothing new, in fact there was an even better robot 5 or 6 years ago in Popular Mechanics that did the same biological digestion-to-electricity conversion, but that one was MOBILE. So theoretically it could walk around catching and eating insects and deriving its power needs from that. Don't know what became of it though, I suppose there were no commercial applications.

    Now if the digestion can be made efficient enough, and if it can catch enough food to store enough surplus energy, maybe it could be made to breed!

  • Larger version needed (Score:3, Funny)

    by SnarfQuest (469614) on Tuesday June 30, @12:44PM (#28531749)

    Democrat school playground. Fewer moronic bad-science laws.

  • And for the alarm... (Score:4, Funny)

    by wowbagger (69688) on Tuesday June 30, @01:09PM (#28532179) Homepage Journal

    And for the alarm, the clock says

    "help me! help me! help me!"

  • In summary (Score:5, Funny)

    by xcut (1533357) on Tuesday June 30, @01:35PM (#28532631)
    "It recharges on the fly"
    • The power generated might be enough to run one headlight. But what would really be interesting is capturing some of the speed energy to help charge the battery. But with using wind.
      • That would be what Regenerative Brakes are designed for. Since Winds is fairly inefficient and actually increase fuel consumption.

      • Re:umm...why??? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Culture20 (968837) on Tuesday June 30, @12:16PM (#28531185)

        The power generated might be enough to run one headlight. But what would really be interesting is capturing some of the speed energy to help charge the battery. But with using wind.

        I'll do you one better. Attach a sail to the car so that almost all of the "speed" energy is harvested. Fans harvesting electricity from the "wind" generated by the engine propelling the car is less efficient than the engine just making the electricity.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by JWSmythe (446288)

        Won't work.

        Well, it would work, but you'd always lose in the overall equation. By putting something in line to capture the "speed energy", you are forced to put more power out to make the speed.

        blah, blah, blah, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it can only change states, blah, blah, blah.

        To expand on the idea, you could put a giant windmill on top of a car that could produce enough electricity to drive with. Unfortunately, it would take mo

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