JamesAuger

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  • Carnivorous Clock eats bugs, begins doomsday countdown

    by 
    Thomas Ricker
    Thomas Ricker
    06.29.2009

    It's not enough that humans gave robots a place to congregate to plan our demise, now we've adapted them with the ability to extract fuel from the very nectar of life. All that innocent experimentation with fuel cells that run on blood has led to this, a flesh-eating clock. This prototype time-piece from UK-based designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau traps insects on flypaper stretched across its roller system before depositing them into a vat of bacteria. The ensuing chemical reaction, or "digestion," is transformed into power that keeps the rollers rollin' and the LCD clock ablaze. The pair offers an alternative design fueled by mice, another contraption whose robotic arm plucks insect-fuel from spider webs with the help of a video camera, and a lamp powered by insects lured to their deaths with ultraviolet LEDs. Man, this is so wrong it has to be right.[Via Hack a Day, thanks Isaac]