Carnivorous Robot Clock – Kills to Survive

FOXNews.com has a very interesting story about a clock that is powered by the flys it kills.

This clock needs no help from the President to kill flys. “Two technologically minded artists in London have built a digital clock that catches bugs, then dissolves their bodies to create electrolytes to power itself”, reports FOXNews.com.

As I understand it, flys or any other small unwarry insects or bugs I presume, get stuck to a long wide strip of flypaper which is looped around like on a conveyor belt or treadmill. The belt brings the prey into the machine where it is “consumed” by the machine. The insects are disolved, converted into electrolites, and that fuel is used to power the belt as well as the digital clock.

Am I the only one who sees a problem with this?  There are scientists all over the world who are stepping over each other to be the first one to invent a “thinking computer”. In other parts of the world you’ve got scientists stepping over each other to build robots that can blast, shoot or fly better than humans. And now we’ve got guys who are acually powering robots with the dead tissue of what they consume.

Exactly how long do you think it’s going to take for someone to someday combine all these technologies into a single “entity”?  I swear, sometimes I think scientists look to Hollywood (ie: Terminator, Matrix etc) and say, “Wow! Wouldn’t it be really cool to actually  invent that shit? We should give it a try.”  With all the problems in the world the last thing we need is a damn machine that must eat to survive. What if some day in the future this thing becomes armed and is given a brain? It is possible that it might just decide to kill and eat us?  

Another ”that’s just stupid” moment in technology.

Posted by Michael E. on Jul 2 2009. Filed under Inventions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry