UK-based designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau believe that, if robots are ever to be welcomed into people’s homes, they’ll need to fit in with the rest of the furniture, and earn their keep. Their prototypes trap and digest pests like flies and mice to gain energy.
Are flesh eating robots the future of pest control?
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(23 Responses)
“darling, the table just ate the cat!
Is it just me, or is the fly swat/spray and a cat too much for people to understand?
Rodents being digested in my coffee table! That will really impress my wife, when I suggest we pop out to Ikea for a new bloomqvuist mouse muncher!
Surely if you have a rodent problem …. it would be cheaper and more humane to call an expert or buy some traps?
Also … how long does the poor mouse take to digest? Would I have to sit watching tv with the volume turned up, whilst poor Mickey is slowly eaten alive by microbes and lets out little mouse screams?
What happens if I drop something on the table and it breaks. Am I eaten alive?
How long does a digested mouse power the table? If the table doesn’t “eat” for a while …. do I need to find a mouse and feed it to the table to keep it working? It sounds like little shop of horrors with furniture.
Q1nny
This is a great idea, but kids with little hands could be a problem.
Very very clever idea, but I do feel sorry for the mice! Hope it doesn’t hurt them too much!
aHahaaha….sorry, not sure if i have to laugh because i hardly had any sleep or because of this Eating- Table idea….heheeh ohw my goody, and i thought i was mad….:-D
Oh, well the mouse trap table would at times work in a house like mine but in most not .. ofcourse .. Not sure if it is a animal friendly system .. although poison is def. not friendly.
My birds eat the flies but they don’t light up .. (dont eat enough flies though ..)
Meat eating robots … I dont see them as robots but another more advanced technique as a possible alternative for other, more cheaper, methods.
I myself right now am thinking of “designing” a new insect trap … we do have the wonderfully working sticky paper rolls which you can hang here of there .. but my birds will get glued to it as well (happened once .. I found one of its main feathers still sticking to it … must have hurt ..). So I’m thinking .. maybe a little cilinder of gauze/netting around it so that the birds can’t get to it (and they will try again .. ) . I dont like the idea of flies being glued to the rolls either as it is a slow death. Slapping wont work .. they keep flying around, wont sit still. And hey .. as I have a door open all the time to outdoors …
Lots of flies the last couple of years. Reminds me of my childhood, way more flies back then as well. Nothing to do with not clean houses or such. And in the country it is always worse.
Maybe I could try to hypnotize them … (ever noticed that one little fly can put you in a trance with its little tickling paws on your skin if you focus from a pleasure point ???)
Flesh-eating furniture?
Perhaps they’ll start selling it in Yikes-ia.
Looks like the tables have turned.
How many digested flies does it take to power a bug-zapper?
Or as they say at the spider McDonald’s drive through… “Do you want flies with that?”
On a more serious note when I used to visit a bunch of friends from college, they had a sofa we dubbed “the sofa which ate people” as it was so infested with various vermin that if you spent the night on it, you’d be bitten all over by parasites and bedbugs. If some chronically hungover student overslept on it there’d be nothing left but the bones by 3pm the next day! You don’t even need robot furniture for that.
Which would win in a battle, the infested sofa or the robot one?
Interesting idea, but I have my worries. What happens when these things become self aware? What happens when they’ve eaten all the mice and bugs? Will they turn on the pets? The humans???
I for one welcome our new robotic furniture overlords!
@ Slugsie I think we are a LOOOOOONG way off “self aware” robots.
To add the two is really rather unfair fair towards the hoards of mindless-flesh-eating-zombie robots that will enslave us all in the future.
@Nopke: “(ever noticed that one little fly can put you in a trance with its little tickling paws on your skin if you focus from a pleasure point ???)”
No. I have to say I have never noticed that. I hope to God I never do.
This looks incredibly inhumane to me. Live capture traps are the best!
what kind of people will own these things? the idea of meat fuled robots is great- but having them in my house? nope. I would suggest just being a bit clean around the house, thusly saving you money, gaining excercise and the brilliant absence of rotting meat in your coffee table.
SGC: you will … one day .. a very Brown like fly will cross your path … Some have to be forced you know .. others seek pleasure all by itself … ehehe ..
If you created a Brown-like fly would it be like in that movie with Jeff Goldblum where he becomes a human-fly hybrid, only it would do a card trick first and then tell you how much money was in your wallet before melting your face with its vomited digestive juices?
…and then the hybrid fly would be all “kiillll meeee…” and you’d go to shoot it in the head but you’d only have one real bullet in the gun and 5 blanks, and it would dodge out of the way when you got to the real bullet because IT WOULD KNOW, MAN. IT WOULD JUST KNOW.
Did you guys go look at New Scientist? One of the robot things is built to encourage spiders to spin webs on it. SPIDERS. No thank you, I would rather have a spider-killing robot, to be honest.
lol XD
*takes the caffine and sugar away from SCG* hehe
P.S. That movie = WIN!
OH MY GOD! How did you know I am currently full of sugary caffeine??? That’s amazing!
That was the best movie. It totally freaked me out, though. I was fine up until the flesh-melting vomit. The original sucked, I seem to recall it ended up with a tiny man in a web going “heelllp meeee” and nobody did a single card trick. Lame.
SGC- If you want to see stage magicians doing the whole matter transporter thing, try the movie “The Prestige”… although neither Hugh Jackman or Christian Bale end up half-fly and vomiting all over people, which lets the movie down IMO.
I just looked up the plot summary on IMDB and I suspect this movie needs more Criss Angel. I’ll probably find it and watch it anyway, though.
I’m not so sure we’re that far away from self-aware robots. What if the table were to digest the Brown-like fly? Can you imagine what the consequences would be? A self-aware, flesh eating table that could convince you to give it your valuables, that’s what.
Very clever, but slightly revolting.
Thanks for nice post !, interesting investigate
“Is using flies for fuel humane?” he asked as he bit down on his ham sandwich.