Picked this up from PC Pro's Website today...

["Phil Harris" <phillip.harris1@xxxxxxx>]

SlugBot: Slayer of garden pests

Here's a good robotics story for a Friday afternoon. SlugBot, which is
being developed by UK scientists, is not only partial to the odd slug,
it can actually live off them.

SlugBot's creator, Dr. Ian Kelly, and a team of scientists at the
Bristol-based University of West England's Intelligent Autonomous
Systems Laboratory, are working on a robot that can identity the slimy
critters at the dead of night, store them on board, and carry them back
to base where they are added to a fermentation tank. SlugBot then plugs
itself into the fermentation tank where it recharges using electricity
generated by the slug goo.

At least that's the goal. But so far the SlugBot has only managed to
pick up a plastic pest off a pile of mud on the laboratory floor. Work
has now moved to building the fermentation tank.

Dr. Kelly has left his prodigy behind and moved onto the CORO research
group, at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California,
USA. But SlugBot was recently voted one of the best inventions of the
year by Time magazine, although a worried reader felt moved to point out
'the terrifying shadow lurking beside this contraption. It is, after
all, a machine that draws its power from the consumption of a living
organism!'