A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find -- grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies. Robotic Technology Inc.'s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot -- that's right, "EATR" -- "can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable," reads the company's Web site. That "biomass" and "other organically-based energy sources" wouldn't necessarily be limited to plant material -- animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they'd be plentiful in a war zone.
We live in the most powerful country in the world, and I suppose it's comforting on some level to know that we're developing technology to...uh, clean up the garbage?
Yes, I understand that war is a messy business, and I suppose it's a good thing that someone is thinking about the cleanup, but this seems a bit over the top. While I applaud efforts to clean up any mess, I'd be a good deal more excited if this sort of effort and ingenuity were being put into finding ways to prevent armed conflict in the first place. Instead of creating new and different ways of creating bodies, how about working to find ways to create them in the first place?
The idea behind EATR may have some practical uses, but I can't help but wonder if anyone at Robotic Technology Inc. saw the irony and the silliness- never mind the potential for a PR nightmare- inherent in this project. Apparently not.
Then again, you just have to love American ingenuity, eh?
WTF??
