Yes you read right, there is urine and heart in the same statement as we leap towards an era where everything sis possible, scientists at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK announced last month that they had successfully created a prototype robotic “heart” that runs on human urine, constructed with a 3D printer. All we know is that a full working robot is still under development. Using a rubber-like 3D printed material known as TangoPlus, the scientists have manifested its ability to charge up to 3.5 volts and perform 33 pumps using just 2 milliliters of “fresh” human urine.
As the scientists wrote in their paper on the demo heart, published in the December issue of the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics: “The energy harvested could be used by the EcoBot to perform sensing tasks such as monitoring air quality and pollution levels, and a number of such EcoBots could form a distributed mobile sensor network within a future city environment.”
The heart used in the demo requires microbial fuel cell technology, in which bacteria and other microorganisms are stored in a battery-like device produce electrons as they digest and metabolize their own food. The researchers have been pursing other throwaway materials as robotic fuel sources in the past, including “rotten fruit and vegetables, dead flies, waste water” and “sewage sludge.” You can read the source link for more details of this amazing science.
