Meeting notice: The 00.09.05 meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the 
Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge), a block down from the corner of 
Main St. and Mass Ave.  If you're new and can't recognize us, ask the 
manager.  He'll probably know where we are.  More details below.

<-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> 

Proposed topic: Feral Robots

The advantages of powering a robot with ambient vegetation are that 
the energy content of vegetation is relatively high -- plant 
carbohydrates (sugars and starches) have about the same energy density 
as lithium batteries; digestive mechanisms can be made light and 
compact (as nature testifies); and vegetation is very widely 
distributed in both time and space.  The specific output is of course 
not chemical but electrical -- the idea being to tap into the electron 
transport chain stimulated by the microbial femermentation of (say) 
sugar.  These electrons are then organized around one end of the 
circuit, making in effect a microbial fuel cell.  Machines competent 
to extract energy from this source could live off the land unattended 
for years at a time.  

Applications are not hard to imagine.   For the military: guns that 
live in the forest; for consumers, gardening robots that rake, weed, 
trim, and prune, and feed themselves with the results of their labor. 
Environmental managers might have a need for autonomous mobile sensor 
platforms that could both respond to requests to visit given sectors 
and then establish a working presence in those sectors for long 
periods. Perhaps the most ambitious application would be designing 
ecological links as needed, such as a machine for detecting and eating 
"foreign species" (however that is to be defined), or accelerating 
nutrient cycles.  

A number of labs are working away on the concept, but several problems 
remain. Such a device would need a sense of taste to make sure it did 
not accidently eat something toxic to its fermenters;  the problem of 
long-term autonomous maintenance remains unsolved; some policy needs 
to be worked out wrt robot poop.  However, there do not seem to be any 
shoestoppers.  See www.gastrobots.com.



<-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> 
Announcement Archive: 
http://www.pobox.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html.

<-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><->

Legend:

"NSG" expands to Nanotechnology Study Group.  The Group meets on 
the first and third Tuesdays of each month at the above address, 
which refers to a restaurant located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  

The NSG mailing list carries announcements of these meetings and 
little else.  If you wish to subscribe to this list (perhaps 
having received a sample via a forward) send the string 
'subscribe nsg'  to majordomo@world.std.com.  Unsubs follow the 
same model.  

Discussion should be sent to nsg- d@world.std.com, which must be 
subscribed to separately.  You must be subscribed to nsg-d to 
post to it and must post from the address from which you 
subscribed (An anti- spam thing).

Comments, petitions, and suggestions re list management to: 
nsg@pobox.com.