mouth and gut
Soft robot with a mouth and gut can forage for its own food
Lying in a bath in Bristol is a robotic scavenger, gorging itself on its surroundings. It's able to get just enough energy to take in another stomach full of food, before ejecting its waste and repeating the process. This is no ordinary robot. Developed by a Bristol-based collaboration, this robot imitates the life of salps – squishy tube-shaped marine organisms. Salps have an opening at each end, one for food to enter and one for waste to leave.