Message-Id: <200112140515.AAA17553@melbourne-city-street.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 00:15:06 -0500
To: mit-gardeners@mit.edu, nutso-flaming-pikans@mit.edu
From: Corrina Chase <corrina@MIT.EDU>
Subject: slugbot
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A Robot That Thrives on Slugs

 By Michelle Green

 LONDON (Reuters) - For centuries the humble slug has eaten its way
 through the world's vegetable patches, frustrating farmers and gardeners
 alike, but thanks to British scientists the great plant muncher is about to
 be munched.

 Scientists at Britain's University of West England have developed the
 ``SlugBot,'' a prototype robot capable of hunting down more than 100
 slugs an hour.

 It operates after dark when slugs are most active and uses their rotting
 bodies to generate the electricity it needs to power itself.

 The SlugBot is the brainchild of engineers at the university's Intelligent
 Autonomous Systems Laboratory who wanted to build the world's first
 fully autonomous robot.

 ``Slugs were chosen because they are a major pest, are reasonably
 plentiful, have no hard shell of skeleton, and are reasonably large,'' Dr.
 Ian Kelly, SlugBot's creator, said in a statement.

 The 2-foot-high machine uses an image sensor that beams out red light
 to pinpoint the slugs, which emit a different infra-red wavelength from
 worms and snails.

 It then uses a carbon fiber arm with a three-fingered claw grabber to
 pick up the slugs and store them in a tank.

 After a hard night of slug busting, the robot returns home and unloads its
 victims into a fermentation tank. While the SlugBot recharges, the
 fermentation tank turns the slug sludge into electricity.

 But the robot, voted one of the best inventions of the year by Time
 magazine, has attracted some criticism.

 One Time reader called the invention ``reckless'' in a letter to the
 magazine. ``To create robots that devour flesh is to step over a line that
 we would be insane to cross,'' he said.

 Gardeners were more welcoming. Adam Pasco, editor of the BBC
 Gardener's World magazine, told the Daily Mail: ``Anything that would
 prove a fool-proof method of destroying slugs would be fantastic.''

 A spokeswoman for the university told Reuters on Wednesday there
 were no plans to release the SlugBot on the commercial market. ``It
 was a proof of concept machine only,'' she said.

 The news will disappoint Britain's farmers who spend an average 20
 million pounds a year trying to eradicate the slimy creatures. 
------------------------------------
-Corrina Chase
http://web.mit.edu/corrina/tpool/tidepool.html