{"id":105391,"date":"2020-04-14T20:24:18","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T03:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/new-scavenger-technology-allows-robots-to-eat-metal-for-energy"},"modified":"2020-04-14T20:24:18","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T03:24:18","slug":"new-scavenger-technology-allows-robots-to-eat-metal-for-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/new-scavenger-technology-allows-robots-to-eat-metal-for-energy","title":{"rendered":"New scavenger technology allows robots to \u2018eat\u2019 metal for energy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-scavenger-technology-allows-robots-to-eat-metal-for-energy.gif\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When electronics need their own power sources, there are two basic options: batteries and harvesters. Batteries store energy internally, but are therefore heavy and have a limited supply. Harvesters, such as solar panels, collect energy from their environments. This gets around some of the downsides of batteries but introduces new ones, in that they can only operate in certain conditions and can\u2019t turn that energy into useful power very quickly.<\/p>\n<p>New research from the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s School of Engineering and Applied Science is bridging the gap between these two fundamental technologies for the first time in the form of a \u201cmetal-air scavenger\u201d that gets the best of both worlds.<\/p>\n<p>This metal-air scavenger works like a battery, in that it provides power by repeatedly breaking and forming a series of chemical bonds. But it also works like a harvester, in that power is supplied by <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/energy\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">energy<\/a> in its environment: specifically, the chemical bonds in metal and air surrounding the metal-air scavenger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When electronics need their own power sources, there are two basic options: batteries and harvesters. Batteries store energy internally, but are therefore heavy and have a limited supply. Harvesters, such as solar panels, collect energy from their environments. This gets around some of the downsides of batteries but introduces new ones, in that they can [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}