…and this is a 
The military has plans for a new kind of drone robot that will wander the wastelands of future battlefields, scooping up organic debris — such as dead bodies — and burning them to fuel their advance. The call it an EATR: Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot.
It's kind of sweet, in a morbid way. It recycles! It uses renewable energy! Put a gun on it, and it could even harvest its own fuel as it mows its way through the enemy's cities!
To be perfectly fair, though, the company building it doesn't talk about using bodies for energy, but is more about generic biomass. Bodies are probably messy and inefficient compared to hunks of wood or corn stubble. It's Fox News that emphasized the corpse-eating idea, which somehow seems like just the kind of thing Fox would find copacetic.
Technology
Comments
Posted by: arekksu | July 14, 2009 4:00 PM
"organic matter" including living organic matter?
can it scoop up living people (a la war of the worlds) and burn them for fuel? that would be terrifying.
Posted by: Buford | July 14, 2009 4:01 PM
As long as its the enemy corpses.
Fox would throw a fit if it at any of our troops.
Posted by: Josh
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July 14, 2009 4:02 PM
Yeah, because Fox probably envisions all future wars as righteous crusades against people of the wrong color who pray to the wrong god.
Posted by: M31 | July 14, 2009 4:05 PM
What the robots need to do is use the biomass energy to create MORE ROBOTS.
So even if the war were over and all the people were dead the robots could continue the mission. Hurray! I don't think that's what Von Neumann had in mind, though.
Wasn't there an old Star Trek episode about that?
Posted by: Hank Roberts | July 14, 2009 4:08 PM
Philip K. Dick --Fourth Variety.
"... Not the Second. They had been wrong. There were more types. Not just three. Many more, perhaps. At least four...."
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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July 14, 2009 4:08 PM
For one thing, bodies don't burn. I suppose fuel could be extracted from bodies, but that would take a good deal of work and intricate robotic knowledge.
Course, what news outlet wouldn't like to focus on the possibility of using bodies for energy? But it's rather irresponsible to suggest it when there's no evidence that it would do so, and yes, Fox seems all too prone to doing so.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: Greg B | July 14, 2009 4:09 PM
Well... I guess it can eat the crops and create even more bodies than a bullet.
(I find it fun to imagine a robot devouring an Afghan poppy feild)
Posted by: daveau
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July 14, 2009 4:09 PM
Dammit! There go my jokes regarding steam-powered cell phones and coal burning computers. Now they really has steam-powered robits.
Posted by: CaptainKendrick
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July 14, 2009 4:10 PM
Mmmmmmmm......soylent camouflage......yum
Posted by: Michael | July 14, 2009 4:12 PM
Robots that eat and kill. On the face of it, granted modern computer science is nothing like a '50s scifi movie, but does that strike anyone as a particularly bad idea?
Posted by: News Corpse | July 14, 2009 4:14 PM
I don't call it News Corpse for nothing.
Posted by: phantomreader42 | July 14, 2009 4:21 PM
GregB @ #7:
I don't have the link handy, but I'm sure you'd get a chuckle out of the connection between stoned wallabies and crop circles.
Posted by: Erp | July 14, 2009 4:28 PM
Burning bodies would be a violation of the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field (article 17).
Posted by: beanjavert | July 14, 2009 4:29 PM
Best. Acronym. Ever.
Posted by: Taz | July 14, 2009 4:29 PM
I can actually picture some future general ordering a foolhardy attack in order to create a nice fuel-laden field for the robots to advance.
Posted by: blueelm | July 14, 2009 4:29 PM
So... we don't like manimals, even if they save lives. But we DO like corpse eating robots. Good to know. Glad I studied computers instead of biology!
Posted by: Brock | July 14, 2009 4:30 PM
I can't imagine the bots extracting enough energy to move very fast. Far more frightening is a Jurassic Park scenario where the military resurrects and trains velociraptors!
A bit more seriously though, wouldn't this violate some sort of rules of war, Geneva Convention or something? Like aren't nations supposed to have the right to bury what's left of their dead? I could be imagining that. But there's not much left if a hulking cannibot eats you, or a raptor drags your nearly lifeless body back to its nest. Or would leaving behind the bones be enough?
Posted by: Brock | July 14, 2009 4:37 PM
Thanks Erp; you answered my question before I asked. You'll have to train me in your psychic abilities.
Posted by: chrisD | July 14, 2009 4:40 PM
Not quite Wall-e, but a step in the right direction.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | July 14, 2009 4:45 PM
how wonderfully steampunk. "general, sir, the assault has ground to a halt! the robo-tanks are all out of steam; the enemy left no wood behind for them to burn!"
Posted by: Wildflower | July 14, 2009 4:48 PM
Blah, so instead of the awesome dragon tank we now get a stupid EATR?!?
Posted by: skyotter | July 14, 2009 4:49 PM
sure, that's all well and good if EATR is deployed against, you know, organic enemies. it'll be rather less effective if deployed against other killbots, though
Posted by: Brian D | July 14, 2009 4:52 PM
What a delightful blend of the Matrix' machines and a Terminator.
This is the second-most-disturbing piece of military robotics news I've heard this year. The first would undoubtedly go to the Multiple Kill Vehicle.
Posted by: A Recovering Catholic | July 14, 2009 5:15 PM
Fox news, a bunch of bizarro's.
Posted by: Shoggoth | July 14, 2009 5:21 PM
P-Zed, are you criticizing this? This is the coolest thing to come out of the Pentagon in years.
And no, not just because shoggoths work in a similar fashion.
Posted by: JSW | July 14, 2009 5:22 PM
Mayor Jeb was right all along!
We're doomed!
Posted by: Matrim | July 14, 2009 5:28 PM
#6 - I was under the impression that fat burns very nicely. Granted that leaves the majority of a person's bodymass that isn't really burnable, but if it could apply a low heat to melt off the skin and fat and expel the remaining biomass, it could work (plus it'd have the additional psychological effect of leaving burned fleshless corpses laying all over the place).
Posted by: Jordan K Stanich | July 14, 2009 5:30 PM
sounds like a good tech to adapt to research robots...not sure in what context but the thought popped to mind right away.
Die Fox Die
Posted by: Josh
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July 14, 2009 5:35 PM
Maybe technically it isn't burning in a chemical reaction sense, but the look...and smell of whatever does happen to a body is extremely similar to the after effects of fire.
Posted by: Martin Christensen | July 14, 2009 5:38 PM
I like The Register's take on this. Of course, I like their take on anything to do with robots, autonomous gadgets and The Rise of the Machines in general.
Posted by: @BangClangCrash | July 14, 2009 5:41 PM
Machines that destroy forests in order to kill? I think Miyazaki has a new movie antagonist.
@25 - I knew there would be at least one HPL reference. Thank you.
Does anyone think David Icke confused our secret Lizard Overlords for the Old Ones? Anyone could make that mistake if they're as psychotic as he seems to be.
Posted by: Loki | July 14, 2009 5:45 PM
I am glad SOMEBODY is forward thinking enough to prepare for the inevitable zombie invasion and build the perfect anti-zombie unit.
Posted by: Alex Besogonov | July 14, 2009 5:46 PM
I don't know about you, but I find armed drones and robots abhorrent. They are even more horrible than chemical and nuclear weapons.
Just imaging that the president of the US could at any time without ANY traceability and accountability destroy anybody. Cause that's what going to start happen soon.
Posted by: ice9 | July 14, 2009 5:49 PM
Auxiliary power: they wire the robots directly from Fox News and run on bullshit. Or they attach a turbine to Edward R. Murrow and capture the energy he creates when he spins in his grave.
ice
Posted by: Martin Christensen | July 14, 2009 5:52 PM
#33:
Oh, come off it! They'll just be used against brown people. What's the problem?
By the way, am I the only one to think that this gives a whole new meaning to the expression, "may you be eaten first?"
Posted by: Grizzly | July 14, 2009 5:52 PM
I bet the EATR is controlled by a hybrid man-lizard brain created from embryonic stem cells.
Posted by: Dwight D. Eisenhower | July 14, 2009 5:52 PM
Ya know, atheists are always talking about how much violence religious intolerance has created today and in the past, but it's not like science doesn't have blood on its hands. The scientific establishment long ago sold its soul to the military-industrial complex. Inquisition? Sure, terrible. Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Thank you, Oppenheimer.
Posted by: Grizzly | July 14, 2009 5:56 PM
I bet the EATR is controlled by a hybrid man-lizard brain created from embryonic stem cells.
Posted by: Ancient Greek Lady | July 14, 2009 5:59 PM
Hector fell headlong, and the EATR “Achilles Model 634” came to a stop and vaunted over him, whirring. Its feeder arm lifted.
Hoping the remote command unit would hear, Hector said as the life ebbed out of him, "I beg you—by your life and parents—do not let the EATR devour me at the ships of the Achaeans, but accept the rich treasure of gold and bronze which my father and mother will offer you, and send my body home, that the Trojans and their wives may give me my dues of fire when I am dead."
The EATR Achilles’ claw opened. Someone from the remote command unit must have heard Hector’s plea, and a voice that could barely be heard through static answered, "Dog, what do you mean—life and parents? I am able to cut your flesh into pieces and eat it raw, for the evil done to me. I am that which nothing shall save you from—the EATR! If they were to bring ten or twenty-fold ransom and weigh it out for me on the spot, with promise of yet more hereafter, it will not happen. If Priam son of Dardanus were to offer me your weight in gold, even so your mother shall never lay you out and make lament over the son she bore, but the EATR “Achilles Model 634” will eat you utterly up."
Hector with his dying breath then said, "I know you for what you are, and was sure that I would not move you, for you are iron; be sure to watch your heels on the day when Paris will slay you at the Scaean gates."
When he had thus spoken, the shrouds of death enfolded him and the EATR claw descended and began its work. One of the soldiers in the remote command unit turned to his neighbor and said, "It’s easier to handle Hector now than when he was launching fire onto our ships," and as he spoke the EATR thrust its claw into him anew.
Posted by: Sherry
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July 14, 2009 6:02 PM
The Stainless Steel Rat wants YOU!
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | July 14, 2009 6:05 PM
I, for one, welcome our new mechanical overlords!!
Whenever I encounter an idiot who professes to believe in theistic evolution, I always ask them "how do you know that god's plan isn't that humans serve the role of organic substrate to bootstrap the first versions of the divinely inspired machine intelligence?" Halellulja!
Posted by: Platypus | July 14, 2009 6:26 PM
My robot acquired you targets in the battlespace...
...but it eated dem.
Posted by: John Morales | July 14, 2009 6:45 PM
M31 @4,
Yeah. It was a
rip-off ofhomage to Saberhagen.Posted by: Alan Kellogg | July 14, 2009 6:56 PM
To paraphrase from a D&D story I once read,
"A balrog, in a goblin village. That's too gross, I don't believe it."
The whole story stinks of cheap baloney gone bad.
Posted by: Katkinkate | July 14, 2009 8:05 PM
I don't think you'd get much energy out of burning flesh. It would take a shit load of energy to dry it out first. There's a reason old-fashioned funeral pyres are surrounded by piles of wood.
Anyhow, off topic sorry but, PZ, what happened to the Random Quotes? I miss my dose of little pearls of wisdom.
Posted by: clevedan | July 14, 2009 8:13 PM
...I'm not dead yet...i think i'll go for a walk....i feel happy..
Monty python
Posted by: PZ Myers
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July 14, 2009 8:29 PM
I removed the random quotes temporarily to see if they were one of the causes of the terrible performance here.
Apparently, they weren't.
Posted by: Katkinkate | July 14, 2009 8:37 PM
Cool. Ta, PZ.
Posted by: Paleos | July 14, 2009 8:42 PM
Wow, Greek Lady @39, I enjoy your version of a classic!
Actually, destroying woodlands, crops and fuel would in the long run be more devastating to the enemy than eating their corpses. Eating the dead sounds horrifying, but doesn't do an awful lot besides demoralize those left. Burning everything else leaves people without shelter, food or fuel and will cause logistical problems in the long run. I believe it was the North in the Civil War that used this very tactic (destroying crops and fuel, not flesh-eating robots).
Posted by: hje | July 14, 2009 8:51 PM
Carnage we can believe in.
Posted by: John Morales | July 14, 2009 9:07 PM
Paleos @49, a scorched earth policy has been used in war since ancient times.
Posted by: The Vicar | July 14, 2009 9:11 PM
What next, somebody announces they've solved the garbage and food crises simultaneously by creating Bio-Meat?
Posted by: Defaithed | July 14, 2009 9:38 PM
Posted by: Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Ya know, atheists are always talking about how much violence religious intolerance has created today and in the past, but it's not like science doesn't have blood on its hands. The scientific establishment long ago sold its soul to the military-industrial complex. Inquisition? Sure, terrible. Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Thank you, Oppenheimer."
An incredibly dumb comment. Science is the search for knowledge via empirical methods. The search for knowledge via empirical methods has no "blood on its hands" – that doesn't even make sense.
Tribalism, greed, lust for power, religious bigotry, and similar ugly characters, all choosing to arm themselves with knowledge and tools built from that knowledge, are the bloody-handed bastards responsible for war.
Posted by: Strangel
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July 14, 2009 10:28 PM
This is a good idea... but the battlefield operation makes it seem pretty morbid.
Imagine... no dead animals on the side of the road. It could also be used to scour the wilderness for missing persons...
Posted by: Joker | July 14, 2009 10:47 PM
What I find somewhat worrisome about this is that I don't like the idea of creating a machine that can use me for fuel. That just seems like playing a dangerous game.
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | July 14, 2009 10:57 PM
How to Burn the Dead
You don't need to try them out, what you need is to get the fats and oils alight. There are cases where people light on fire and burn so hot even bone is consumed. The elements these cases have in common are people who are somewhat overweight, with a greater than usual percentage of body fat, and wearing cloth with good wicking qualities. Being sweaty and in a drunken stupor helps.
Drunk so the victim doesn't awaken and struggle. Sweaty so the cloth is permeated with oils to catch on fire. The burning sweat then draws oils and, later, fat from the victim. The heat from the burning fat and oil will then dry out the body, allowing the dessicated flesh and bone to burn in turn.
That a body can burn under such conditions has been shown with experiments using pig carcasses draped in cloth. Though sometimes, it appears, a combination of events can lead to a build up of an electrical charge in and/or around a person that leads to a spark to sets a piece of cloth alight.
But we all know such things don't happen, just as rocks don't fall from the sky. At least not where astronomers can see it. Or is my info a bit out of date where that's concerned? :)
Posted by: Dwight D. Eisenhower | July 14, 2009 11:06 PM
Defaithed,
Read: The scientific establishment long ago sold its soul to the military-industrial complex, as in those persons being paid to use the scientific method to create super-weapons have blood on their hands. I agree it is fatuous to say "science" has committed any atrocities; my point was that it is just as asinine to say "religion" has blood on its hands. People do immoral things with the power they possess (whether it be the ideological power of religious leaders or the technological power of engineers).
Posted by: DLC | July 15, 2009 2:08 AM
and when they combine EATR with a machine able to replicate itself out of spares scavenged from other warbots, Von Neumann will roll over in his grave and say to Malthus: "we've been replaced by beings of our own making" Malthus will turn to Darwin and ask "did your theory predict this?"
To which Darwin will reply "Hell no, we were barely out of the Iron Age. . . " And Darwin will turn to H.G. Wells, who will pre-empt him by saying " No, I never dreamed of this in my worst nightmares, although they are a bit like the Martians. . . Perhaps when Harlan Ellison gets here we can ask him" . . . and the Dead Thinkers Club will go back to waiting.
Posted by: Lt Flebner | July 15, 2009 2:32 AM
Interesting use of the word "copacetic". I had always thought it was used to describe a satisfactory present condition ("Everything's copacetic"), whereas here I'm not sure if it means "interesting" or "noteworthy" or "laudable" or... what?
Posted by: Peter Ashby | July 15, 2009 3:26 AM
@Sherry
I was more a fan of Bill the Galactic Hero myself, but Jim would be a good man as well. We could always try Pirx the Pilot as well.
Posted by: Faithless | July 15, 2009 3:56 AM
The SKYNET countdown just got shorter...
Posted by: M.C.K. | July 15, 2009 5:03 AM
Nom nom nom!
Posted by: dave | July 15, 2009 6:14 AM
61 beat me 2 it Skynet ftw Summer Glau ! btw watch Screamers - based on PK Dicks 2nd Variety - not bad lousy title tho
Posted by: bdh | July 15, 2009 8:10 AM
I'd buy that for a dollar!
Posted by: J | July 15, 2009 8:57 AM
Yeah, I read the entire set of links to the company's website: There is nothing whatsoever in there about eating corpses.
And frankly, I'm suspicious of the whole thing's seriousness. There are two things that occur to me:
1.) The *extremely* sketchy visuals and description. Seems like they're trying to get a 5 million dollar research grant from DARPA, which they will blow on some cheap computer modeling, pocket the rest, say, "Nope, it won't work" and then go on their merry way.
2.) I'm trying to imagine something more energetically and spatially inefficient than a robot powered by electricity generated by steam generated by burning biomass gathered from the environment--but I can't come up with anything. A robot like that would NOT be the cute little thing in their concept drawings but would rather need to be an *enormous* machine with a giant boiler and furnace. Something the size of a steam engine perhaps.
And to work, it would need to spend a LOT of time gathering fuel and *nothing else*. Like, 80-90% of it's operating hours would be spent looking for "food". By contrast, the Mars rovers have been going for years using their solar panels, which they can deploy to passively gather energy while, y'know, *doing other stuff*.
So yeah, I think this is just somebody trying to get DARPA money for "research" for Snowball's Chance Industries.
Posted by: Christian A. | July 15, 2009 9:56 AM
Over 'ere in Germany, there has been a very tiny bruhaha over some newspaper article in stupid BILD. There was a guy who said he was able to generate fuel out of biomass. When he replied positive wether his device could also process dead kitten, BILD turned it into a story about "cat power", or "diesel kittens" (I don't know exactly anymore. But it was outrageous). But I see a pattern here.
Stupid right wing media people just WANT to consume rotting corpses they pick up randomly.
Posted by: Bernard Bumner
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July 15, 2009 10:26 AM
1 average adult weight in vegetable biomass/100 miles? How many miles is the thing going to need to travel in order to harvest 150lb of appropriately-sized, combustible vegetation? (Unless you're only going to deploy the thing in lush, temperate environments?)
The only utility I see for this is as a self-powered lawnmower...
Posted by: T_U_T | July 15, 2009 11:06 AM
you all guys happily ignore the fact that this thing will most probably not burn the 'food' in a literal sense, it will decompose it chemically and extract the energy by a fuel cell. And animal matter is more easily chemically decomposed than plants with all the hard stuff like cellulose.
So this thing would most probably hunt down animals / people and gobble up the carcasses.
But I think it is quite useless, because any enemy facing this kind of robotic predator would fight like a cornered rat. So unless they are order of magnitude weaker, and you are prepared to commit complete genocide, you will fail to get any military advantage. The few people falling victim to it would be more than offset by making the rest, including all civilians capable of holding a gun, fight to the bitter end rather than being devoured by this abomination.
Posted by: Bernard Bumner
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July 15, 2009 11:13 AM
Failure to read the "BRIEF PROJECT OVERVIEW EATR: ENERGETICALLY AUTONOMOUS TACTICAL ROBOT", and note that one of the "four major subsystems" is:
Posted by: The Pale Scot | July 15, 2009 12:18 PM
This idea has already been covered in the film Zombie Strippers. a "chemo-virus" is created that will re-animate dead soldiers who then continue their march to victory, supplied by eating the brains and appendages of their victims. However, its important to keep this technology out of the hands of porn stars and strippers, who will use it to entertain their victims before chowing down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wa3HmeTww8
Posted by: Colwyn Abernathy | July 15, 2009 3:52 PM
that would be terrifying.
Terrifyingly AWESOME. Get Michael Bay on the horn. I got a great idea for his next picture.
Posted by: Art | July 15, 2009 7:01 PM
I would think that animal or human fat could be burned and might be a fairly concentrated energy source. Of course your average Taliban fighter is pretty svelte with very little body fat. The logical solution would be for unit to go for the brain. Always pretty fatty.
Flocks of autonomous and predatory robotic birds of prey ... that wants to eat your brains. Delicious, fatty brains.
That paints a pretty picture.
Now if they could repair and assemble themselves from found parts...
Posted by: khmer today | July 15, 2009 10:35 PM
This is a good idea... but the battlefield operation makes it seem pretty morbid.
Posted by: myers | July 16, 2009 9:34 AM
J @65
So yeah, I think this is just somebody trying to get DARPA money for "research" for Snowball's Chance Industries.
I tend to agree with you on this, although I believe, that hardly makes it any less reprehensible and in many respects, is more so.
The economic "conservatives" see no limits to big government spending when it's decked out in fear and goes through Lockheed. There is no end to B.S., that can be sold to the American public, when it is done in the name of National Defense.
Speaking of Ike, if he hadn't sold the interstate as a defense project, it never would have been built.
Posted by: myers | July 16, 2009 9:37 AM
J@65
"So yeah, I think this is just somebody trying to get DARPA money for "research" for Snowball's Chance Industries."
I tend to agree with you on this, although I believe, that hardly makes it any less reprehensible and in many respects, is more so.
The economic "conservatives" see no limits to big government spending when it's decked out in fear and goes through Lockheed. There is no end to the B.S., that can be sold to the American public, when it is done in the name of National Defense.
Speaking of Ike, if he hadn't sold the interstate as a defense project, it never would have been built.
Posted by: Bernard Bumner
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July 16, 2009 10:37 AM
At approx 3lb per human brain, that is 50 heads per 100 miles. That is a lot of death for little return... (Also, brains are around 80% water, but only 10% lipids - and those are mainly membrane lipids, rather than triglycerides. Cooked beef brain is only around 150 calories per 100g. So, little chance of low-temperature combustion, and little calorific yield.)
Posted by: waypasthadenough | July 16, 2009 4:38 PM
Hey, if the bots are trained to hunt and kill "Liberal" freaks they'll be a great thing:
http://willowtown.com/promo/quotes.htm
Posted by: waypasthadenough | July 16, 2009 4:41 PM
Hey, if the bots are trained to hunt and kill "Liberal" freaks they'll be a great thing:
http://willowtown.com/promo/quotes.htm