EcoBot-II: An artificial agent with a natural metabolism

In this paper we report the development of the robot EcoBot-II, which exhibits a primitive form of artificial symbiosis. Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) were used as the onboard energy supply, which consisted of bacterial cultures from sewage sludge and employed oxygen from free air for oxidation at the cathode. EcoBot-II was able to perform sensing, information processing, communication and actuation when fed (amongst other substrates) with flies. This is the first robot in the world, to utilise unrefined substrate, oxygen from free air and exhibit four different types of behaviour

Film and Poetry Symposium.

The relationship between image and text has been an interest of experimental filmmakers almost from the beginning of cinema. Different methods of combining film and language / poetry have been proposed and introduced as terms in various phases of the 20th century, such as the film poem, poetry film, film essay, the video poem, text film, etc. In each of these types/genres, filmmakers experimented with methods of combining verbal language and image, such as the use of text on the screen (a tradition that begins already in silent cinema and reaches its peak within fluxus films), the use of poetic voice over and spoken word (often with the poets themselves reading their own works), the idea of actual language translations to pictures, as well as the research of poetic forms in the cinema, i.e. the investigation of a concept of a more "vertical", lyrical filmmaking form that reminds of the tradition of modernist poetry

Queer Approaches to Lena Platonos

Lena Platonos has been seminal for the Greek queer community since the ’80s. Both her lyrics, which express distinct, often lonely subjectivities, and her peculiar theatrical electronic music, keep on enchanting and inspiring queer music scenes and collectives. Platonos’ music is often described as “odd,” “strange,” “quirky”. The English word “queer” can also be translated as “odd” or “strange”. The same word is also known as the derogatory term (equivalent to “abnormal” in Greek), reclaimed by a radical part of LGBT activists in the late 1980s, against the prevailing discourse about normativity and the politics of “not being provocative”. In Greece, the term started being used from the mid-2000s onwards, initially by various collectives, with a critical, interdisciplinary and anti-authoritarian political stance. What do we mean, then, when we talk about “Lena Platonos’ queer readings”? Do we mean that Platonos’ music is “quirky”? That it is “abnormal”? Or that it is preferred by “strange” people because it is “odd”

From single MFC to cascade configuration: The relationship between size, hydraulic retention time and power density

© 2016 The Authors. Achieving useful electrical power production with the MFC technology requires a plurality of units. Therefore, the main objective of much of the MFC research is to increase the power density of each unit. Collectives of MFCs will inherently include units grouped in cascades, whereby the outflow of one is the inflow to the next unit; such an approach allows for better fuel utilisation. However, such a configuration is subject to some important considerations, including: the size of the MFCs; the number of units i.e. the length of the cascade; hydraulic retention time; fuel quality; and optimisation of anode surface and microbial colonisation. In the present study, optimisation of the aforementioned aspects has been investigated in order to establish the most appropriate cascade design. Results demonstrate that an increased flow rate of treated urine achieved equal power density with the same setup when fed with fresh urine at a lower flow rate. The independent investigations of these parameters have led to the design of a cascade that maintains uniformity with regard to the aforementioned parameters, by incorporating units of decreasing size, thus allowing locally shorter hydraulic retention times and therefore leading to increased power density levels

The power of glove: Soft microbial fuel cell for low-power electronics

A novel, soft microbial fuel cell (MFC) has been constructed using the finger-piece of a standard laboratory natural rubber latex glove. The natural rubber serves as structural and proton exchange material whilst untreated carbon veil is used for the anode. A soft, conductive, synthetic latex cathode is developed that coats the outside of the glove. This inexpensive, lightweight reactor can without any external power supply, start up and energise a power management system (PMS), which steps-up the MFC output (0.06-0.17 V) to practical levels for operating electronic devices (>3 V). The MFC is able to operate for up to 4 days on just 2 mL of feedstock (synthetic tryptone yeast extract) without any cathode hydration. The MFC responds immediately to changes in fuel-type when the introduction of urine accelerates the cycling times (35 vs. 50 min for charge/discharge) of the MFC and PMS. Following starvation periods of up to 60 h at 0 mV the MFC is able to cold start the PMS simply with the addition of 2 mL fresh feedstock. These findings demonstrate that cheap MFCs can be developed as sole power sources and in conjunction with advancements in ultra-low power electronics, can practically operate small electrical devices.© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

ASFA BBQ The Garden of Dystopian Pleasures

Organised under the umbrella of ASFA BBQ, the Athens School of Fine Arts yearly performance festival, the Garden of Dystopian Pleasures is a showcase of performance, talks, workshops, screenings etc on notions of post-truth cultures and the return of reactionary propaganda. The two years that have passed since asfaBBQ’s utopian second installment, have brought humanity to a postmodern dead-end of unapologetic misinformation and have given birth to the alt-right, the coolest fascist movement the world has seen in decades

Toward Energetically Autonomous Foraging Soft Robots

© 2016, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. A significant goal of robotics is to develop autonomous machines, capable of independent and collective operation free from human assistance. To operate with complete autonomy robots must be capable of independent movement and total energy self-sufficiency. We present the design of a soft robotic mouth and artificial stomach for aquatic robots that will allow them to feed on biomatter in their surrounding environment. The robot is powered by electrical energy generated through bacterial respiration within a microbial fuel cell (MFC) stomach, and harvested using state-of-the-art voltage step-up electronics. Through innovative exploitation of compliant, biomimetic actuation, the soft robotic feeding mechanism enables the connection of multiple MFC stomachs in series configuration in an aquatic environment, previously a significant challenge. We investigate how a similar soft robotic feeding mechanism could be driven by electroactive polymer artificial muscles from the same bioenergy supply. This work demonstrates the potential for energetically autonomous soft robotic artificial organisms and sets the stage for radically different future robots

EvoBot: Towards a Robot-Chemostat for Culturing and Maintaining Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs)

In this paper we present EvoBot, a RepRap open-source 3D-printer modified to operate like a robot for culturing and maintaining Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs). EvoBot is a modular liquid handling robot that has been adapted to host MFCs in its experimental layer, gather data from the MFCs and react on the set thresholds based on a feedback loop. This type of robot-MFC interaction, based on the feedback loop mechanism, will enable us to study further the adaptability and stability of these systems. To date, EvoBot has automated the nurturing process of MFCs with the aim of controlling liquid delivery, which is akin to a chemostat. The chemostat is a well-known microbiology method for culturing bacterial cells under controlled conditions with continuous nutrient supply. EvoBot is perhaps the first pioneering attempt at functionalizing the 3D printing technology by combining it with the chemostat methods. In this paper, we will explore the experiments that EvoBot has carried out so far and how the platform has been optimised over the past two years

Supercapacitive microbial fuel cell: Characterization and analysis for improved charge storage/delivery performance

© 2016 The Author(s) Supercapacitive microbial fuel cells with various anode and cathode dimensions were investigated in order to determine the effect on cell capacitance and delivered power quality. The cathode size was shown to be the limiting component of the system in contrast to anode size. By doubling the cathode area, the peak power output was improved by roughly 120% for a 10ms pulse discharge and internal resistance of the cell was decreased by ∼47%. A model was constructed in order to predict the performance of a hypothetical cylindrical MFC design with larger relative cathode size. It was found that a small device based on conventional materials with a volume of approximately 21cm3 would be capable of delivering a peak power output of approximately 25mW at 70mA, corresponding to ∼1300Wm−3