Hailed as one of 10 world changing ideas by Scientific American (pay wall), the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot System (also known, fittingly, as EATR) is currently limited to a test area at the University of Maryland. Come 2012, however, there may be a fully mobile and operational unit roaming around. Robert Finkelstein, director at the University of Maryland’s Intelligence Systems Laboratory, compares the the machine to the surprisingly lovable trash compacting robots in Pixar’s WALL-E film. As Finkelstein describes it, “Imagine the robot in WALL-E – but instead of just compacting trash, it’s combusting trash for electrical energy.” The robot “feeds”  on a diet of woodchips, dried leaves, and other vegetative biomass, using a intelligence software to distinguish those items from unusable materials such as metal, rocks, and animal matter. Once identified, a laser-based guidance system directs a robotic arm to grab vegetation and put it in a hopper that leads to an external combustion engine which charges an on-board battery.

In order to further develop the prototype, Finkelstein has set up a company called Robotic Technology. Currently funded by the federal government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Finkelstein envisions EATR dramatically impacting military, civilian, and scientific realms. Possible allocations include reducing the logistical headaches that come with supplying energy to soldiers and military operations in remote locations, and searching out and eating invasive plant species on park lands and farms.

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