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Hi, I'm an engineer,
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and I make robots.
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Now, of course you all know
what a robot is, right?
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If you don't,
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you'd probably go to Google,
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and you'd ask Google what a robot is.
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So let's do that.
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We'll go to Google,
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and this is what we get.
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You can see here there are lots
of different types of robots,
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but they're predominantly
humanoid in structure.
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And they look pretty conventional
because they've got plastic,
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they've got metal,
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they've got motors and gears and so on.
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Some of them look quite friendly,
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and you could go up
and you could hug them.
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Some of them not so friendly,
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they look like they're
straight out of "Terminator,"
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in fact they may well be
straight out of "Terminator."
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You can do lots of really cool
things with these robots --
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you can do really exciting stuff.
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But I'd like to look at different
kinds of robots --
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I want to make different kinds of robots.
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I take inspiration from the things
that don't look like us,
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but look like these.
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So [these are] natural
biological organisms,
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and they do some really cool
things that we can't,
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and current robots can't either.
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They do all sorts great things
like moving around the the floor;
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they go into our gardens
and they eat our crops;
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they climb trees;
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they go in water,
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they come out of water;
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they trap insects and digest them.
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They do really interesting things.
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They live, they breathe, they die,
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they eat things from the environment.
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Our current robots don't really do that.
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Now wouldn't it be great if you could
use some of those characteristics
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in future robots
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so that you could solve some
really interesting problems?
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I'm going to look at a couple of problems
now in the environment
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where we can use the skills and the
technologies derived from these animals,
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and from the plants,
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and we can use them
to solve those problems.
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Let's have a look at two
environmental problems.
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They're both of our making --
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this is man interacting
with the environment
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and doing some rather unpleasant things.
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The first one is to do with
the pressure of population.
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Such is the pressure of population
around the world
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that agriculture and farming is required
to produce more and more crops.
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To do that,
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farmers put more and more
chemicals onto their land.
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They put on fertilizers,
nitrates, pesticides --
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all sorts of things that encourage
the growth of the crops,
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but there are some negative impacts.
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One of the negative impacts is
if you put lots of fertilizer on the land,
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not all of it goes into the crops.
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Lots of it stays in the soil,
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and then when it rains,
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these chemicals go into the water table.
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And in the water table,
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then they go into streams,
into lakes, into rivers,
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and into the sea.
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If you put all of these chemicals,
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these nitrates,
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into those kinds of environments,
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there are organisms in those environments
that will be affected by that --
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algae, for example.
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Algae loves nitrates,
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it loves fertilizer,
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so it will take in all these chemicals,
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and if the conditions are right,
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it will mass produce.
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It will produce masses
and masses of new algae.
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That's called a bloom.
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The trouble is that when algae
reproduces like this,
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it starves the water of oxygen.
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As soon as you do that,
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the other organisms
in the water can't survive.
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So, what do we do?
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We try to produce a robot
that will eat the algae,
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consume it
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and make it safe.
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So that's the first problem.
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The second problem is also of our making,
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and it's to do with oil pollution.
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Now, oil comes out of
the engines that we use,
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the boats that we use.
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Sometimes tankers flush
their oil tanks into the sea,
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so oil is released into the sea that way.
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Wouldn't it be nice if we
could treat that in some way
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using robots that could eat the pollution
the oil fields have produced?
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So that's what we do.
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We make robots that will eat pollution.
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To actually make the robot,
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we take inspiration from two organisms.
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On the right there
you see the basking shark.
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The basking shark is a massive shark.
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It's noncarnivorous,
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so you can swim with it,
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as you can see.
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And the basking shark opens its mouth,
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and it swims through the water,
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collecting plankton.
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As it does that,
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it digests the food,
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and then it uses that energy
in its body to keep moving.
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So, could we make a robot like that --
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like the basking shark
that chugs through the water,
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and eats up pollution?
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Well, let's see if we can do that.
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But also, we take the inspiration
from other organisms.
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I've got a picture here
of a water boatman,
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and the water boatman is really cute.
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When it's swimming in the water,
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it uses its paddle-like legs
to push itself forward.
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So we take those two organisms,
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and we combine them together
to make a new kind of robot.
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In fact, because we're using
the water boatman as inspiration,
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and our robot sits on top of the water,
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and it rows,
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we call it the "Row-bot."
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So, a Row-bot is a robot that rows.
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What does it look like?
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Here's some pictures of the Row-bot,
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and you'll see,
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it doesn't look anything like
the robots we saw right at the beginning.
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Google is wrong;
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robots don't look like that,
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they look like this.
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I've got the robot here.
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I'll just hold it up for you.
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It gives you a sense of the scale,
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and it doesn't look
anything like the others.
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OK, so it's made out of plastic,
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and we'll have a look now
at the components
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that make up the robot --
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what makes it really special.
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The Row-bot is made up of three parts,
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and those three parts are really like
the parts of any organism.
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It's got a brain,
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it's got a body
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and it's got a stomach.
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It needs the stomach to create the energy.
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Any Row-bot will have
those three components,
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and any organism will have
those three components,
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so let's go through them one at a time.
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It has a body,
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and its body is made out of plastic,
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and it sits on top of the water.
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It's got flippers on the side here --
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paddles that help it move,
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just like the water boatman.
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It's got a plastic body,
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but it's got a soft rubber mouth here,
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and a mouth here --
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it's got two mouths.
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Why does it have two mouths?
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One is to let the food go in,
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and the other is to let the food go out.
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You can see really it's got
a mouth and a derriere,
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or a --
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(Laughter)
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something where the stuff comes out.
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which is just like a real organism.
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So it's starting to look
like that basking shark.
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That's the body.
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The second component might be the stomach.
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We need to get the energy into the robot
and we need to treat the pollution,
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so the pollution goes in,
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and it will do something.
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It's got a cell in the middle here
called a microbial fuel cell.
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I'll put this down and I'll
lift up the fuel cell.
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Instead of having batteries,
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instead of having
a conventional power system,
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it's got one of these.
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This is it's stomach.
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And it really is a stomach because
you can put energy in this side
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in the form of pollution,
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and it creates electricity.
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So what is it?
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It's called a microbial fuel cell.
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It's a little bit like
a chemical fuel cell,
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which you might have
come across in school,
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or you might've seen in the news.
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Chemical fuel cells
take hydrogen and oxygen,
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and they can combine them together
and you get electricity.
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That's well-established technology;
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it was in the Apollo space missions.
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That's from 40, 50 years ago.
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This is slightly newer.
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This is a microbial fuel cell.
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It's the same principle:
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it's got oxygen on one side,
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but instead of having
hydrogen on the other,
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it's got some soup,
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and inside that soup
there are living microbes.
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If you take some organic material --
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could be some waste products,
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some food,
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maybe a bit of your sandwich --
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you put it in there,
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the microbes will eat that food,
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and they will turn it into electricity.
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Not only that,
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but if you select
the right kind of microbes,
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you can use the microbial fuel cell
to treat some of the pollution.
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If you choose the right microbes,
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the microbes will eat the algae.
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If you use other kinds of microbes,
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they will eat petroleum
spirits and crude oil.
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So you can see how
this stomach could be used
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to not only treat the pollution,
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but also to generate electricity
from the pollution.
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The robot will move
through the environment,
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taking food into its stomach,
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digest the food,
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create electricity,
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use that electricity to move
through the environment,
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and keep doing this.
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OK, so let's see what happens
when we run the Row-bot --
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when it does some rowing.
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Here we've got a couple of videos,
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the first thing you'll see --
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hopefully you can see here
is the mouth open.
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The front mouth and the bottom mouth open,
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and it will stay opened enough,
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then the robot will start to row forward.
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It moves through the water so that food
goes in as the waste products go out.
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Once it's moved enough,
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it stops and then it closes the mouth --
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slowly closes the mouths --
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and then it will sit there,
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and it will digest the food.
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Of course these microbial fuel cells,
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the contain microbes.
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What you really want is lots of energy
coming out of those microbes
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as quickly as possible.
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But we can't force the microbes,
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and they generate a small amount
of electricity per second.
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They generate miliwatts, or microwatts.
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Let's put that into context.
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You're mobile phone for example,
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one of these modern ones,
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if you use it,
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it takes about one watt.
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So that's a thousand or a million times
as much energy that that uses
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compared to the microbial fuel cell.
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How can we cope with that?
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When the robot has done its digestion,
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and it's taken the food in,
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it will sit there and it will wait until
it has consumed all that food.
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That could take some hours,
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it could take some days.
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A typical cycle for the Row-bot
looks like this:
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you open your mouth,
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you move,
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you close your mouth,
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and you sit there for a while waiting.
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Once you digest your food,
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then you can go about doing
the same thing again.
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But you know what,
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that looks like a real
organism, doesn't it?
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It looks like the kind of thing we do.
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Saturday night,
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we go out,
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open our mouths,
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fill our stomachs,
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sit in front of the telly
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and digest.
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When we've had enough,
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we do the same thing again.
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OK, if we're lucky with this cycle,
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at the end of the cycle we'll have
enough energy left over
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for us to be able to do something else.
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We could send a message, for example.
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We could send a message saying,
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"This is how much pollution
I've eaten recently,"
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or, "This is the kind of stuff
that I've encountered,"
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or, "This is where I am."
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That ability to send a message
saying, "This is where I am,"
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is really really important.
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If you think about the oil slicks
that we saw before,
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or those massive algal blooms,
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what you really want to do
is put your robot out there,
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and eats up all of those pollutions,
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and then you have to go collect them.
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Why?
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Because these robots at the moment,
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this robot I've got here,
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it contains motors,
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it contains wires,
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it contains components which
themselves are not biodegradeable.
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Current robots contain things
like toxic batteries.
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You can't leave those in the environment,
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so you need to track them
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and then when they've finished
their [job] of work,
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you need to collect them.
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That limits the number
of robots you can use.
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If on the other hand,
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you have robot a little bit like
a biological organism,
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when it comes to the end of its life,
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it dies and it degrades to nothing.
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So wouldn't it be nice if these robots,
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instead of being like this --
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made out of plastic --
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are made out of other materials,
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which when you throw them out there,
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they biodegrade to nothing.
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That changes the way
in which we use robots.
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Instead of putting 10 or 100
out into the environment,
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having to track them,
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and then when they die,
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collect them,
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you could put 1,000, a million,
a billion robots
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into the environment.
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Just spread them around.
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You know that at the end of their lives
they're going to degrade to nothing.
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You don't need to worry about them.
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So that changes the way in which
you think about robots
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and the way you deploy them.
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The question is:
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can you do this?
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Well, yes, we have shown
that you can do this.
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You can make robots
which are biodegradable.
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What's really interesting is you
can use household materials
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to make these biodegradable robots.
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I'll show you some;
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you might be surprised.
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You can make a robot out of jelly.
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Instead of having a motor,
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which we have at the moment,
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you can make things called
artificial muscles.
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Artifical muscles are smart materials,
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you apply electricity to them,
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and they contract,
or they bend or they twist.
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They look like real muscles.
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Instead of having a motor,
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you have these artificial muscles.
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And you can make artificial
muscles out of jelly.
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If you take some jelly and some salts,
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and do a bit of jiggery potpourri,
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you can make an artificial muscle.
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We've also shown you can make
the microbial fuel cell's stomach
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out of paper.
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So you could make the whole
robot out of biodegradable materials.
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You throw them out there
and they degrade to nothing.
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This is really, really exciting.
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It's going to totally change the way
in which we think about robots,
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but also it allows you
to be really creative
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in the way in which you think about
what you can do with these robots.
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I'll give you an example.
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If you can use jelly to make a robot --
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and we eat jelly, right?
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So, why not make something like this?
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A robot gummy bear.
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Here I've got something
I prepared earlier.
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I've got a packet --
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and I've got a lemon flavored one.
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I'll take this gummy bear --
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he's not robot, OK?
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We have to pretend.
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And what we do with one of these
is you put it in your mouth --
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the lemon's quite nice.
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Don't chew it too much,
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it's a robot.
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And then you swallow.
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And then it goes into your stomach.
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When it's inside your stomach,
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it moves, it thinks, it twists, it bends,
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it does something.
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It could go further down
into your intestines,
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find our whether you've got
some ulcer or cancer,
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maybe do an injection,
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something like that.
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You know that once it's done
it's job of work,
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it could be consumed by your stomach,
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or if you don't want that,
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it could go straight through you,
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into the toilet,
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and be degraded safely in the environment.
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This changes the way, again
in which we think about robots.
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So, we started off looking at
robots that would eat pollution,
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and now we're looking at robots
which we can eat.
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I hope this gives you some idea
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of the kinds of things we can do
with future robots.
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Thank you very much
for your attention.
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(Applause)