A Robot That Thrives on Slugs

By Michelle Green

LONDON (Reuters) - For centuries the humble slug has eaten its way through the world's vegetable patches, frustrating farmers and gardeners alike, but thanks to British scientists the great plant muncher is about to be munched.

Scientists at Britain's University of West England have developed the ``SlugBot,'' a prototype robot capable of hunting down more than 100 slugs an hour.

It operates after dark when slugs are most active and uses their rotting bodies to generate the electricity it needs to power itself.

The SlugBot is the brainchild of engineers at the university's Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory who wanted to build the world's first fully autonomous robot.

``Slugs were chosen because they are a major pest, are reasonably plentiful, have no hard shell of skeleton, and are reasonably large,'' Dr. Ian Kelly, SlugBot's creator, said in a statement.

The 2-foot-high machine uses an image censor that beams out red light to pinpoint the slugs, which emit a different infra-red wavelength from worms and snails.

It then uses a carbon fiber arm with a three-fingered claw grabber to pick up the slugs and store them in a tank.

After a hard night of slug busting, the robot returns home and unloads its victims into a fermentation tank. While the SlugBot recharges, the fermentation tank turns the slug sludge into electricity.

But the robot, voted one of the best inventions of the year by Time magazine, has attracted some criticism.

One Time reader called the invention ``reckless'' in a letter to the magazine. ``To create robots that devour flesh is to step over a line that we would be insane to cross,'' he said.

Gardeners were more welcoming. Adam Pasco, editor of the BBC Gardener's World magazine, told the Daily Mail: ``Anything that would prove a fool-proof method of destroying slugs would be fantastic.''

A spokeswoman for the university told Reuters on Wednesday there were no plans to release the SlugBot on the commercial market. ``It was a proof of concept machine only,'' she said.

The news will disappoint Britain's farmers who spend an average 20 million pounds a year trying to eradicate the slimy creatures.

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