At this period in history environmentalism is, for lack of a better word, cool. The hybrid is the new Hummer in Hollywood, with everyone from Paris Hilton to Lance Armstrong tooling around town swiftly and silently. Environmentalism is at the freakin apex of coolness right now.There is only one thing that can make it cooler: robots.

Yes, robots; the coolest things in the entire world. A generation raised on Transformers is coming into its own, and they want a cleaner planet and some badass robots. And Pixar’s latest smash hit Wall-E, has obliged them. The film features a planet cleaning robot, left to sweep up the earth man screwed so royally in the near future.

What Pixar didn’t mention is that Wall-E is based on a true story. And by based on a true story we mean that there are robots in the world that are eco-friendly, not that one day we will all be fat blobs on cruise ships.

One university seems to be leading the way on wicked cool eco-powered robots. The University of the West of England in Bristol has come up with not one but two different robots powered by natural materials.

Their first offering is a very simple robot, but a very cool power source. The robot is basically just a light sensitive machine, meaning it reacts to changes in lighting. Its battery, however, is a work of art. It runs on something called a microbial fuel cell. It’s essentially a battery powered by bacteria and food. You take some food scraps, “feed” them to the bacteria, and they produce enzymes that break down carbs into hydrogen and then cause reactions that strip electrons from the hydrogen atoms, powering the battery.

A battery that runs on waste is awesome, but a robot that runs on organic material that IT HUNTS ITSELF!!!!!!!! Is super freaking calabragislity (new word!) awesome. UWE scientists at the school’s robot research department developed a slug hunting robot that powers itself on the decomposing bodies of its prey.

The Slugbot is like a tiny tank with a grabbing arm that uses a light filter and image sensor to scan the area around it for slugs. When it sees a slug it zips over and grabs it, and when its battery is low it returns to base camp and deposits the slug bodies in a fermentation chamber that converts the corpses into biogas. The gas goes into fuel cells and powers the Slugbot, so the slugs power their own genocide.

The Transformers generation cannot help but be excited by these robots and their innovative power sources. With other robots being powered by solar cells or heat energy, the field of robotics seems to be meshing firmly with environmentalism at the moment. One day a Wall-E type robot could very possibly exist, but let’s hope he’s helping us clean a bright and shiny planet Earth, not cleaning up the mess on an uninhabitable planet.

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