Scientists in the UK have developed a robot that is powered with sewage waste, or, in more layman's terms, poo.

Called the EcoBot III, it's entirely powered by energy processed by its microbial fuel cells, which turn waste into energy. Using this mechanism, a robot could be capable of refueling itself autonomously by picking up waste material from the environment.

The robot was built by a joint venture of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory — itself a collaborative research project of the University of Western England and the University of Bristol — and Wessex Water, a regional water and sewage treatment business. The idea behind the project is to develop more energy-efficient and eco-friendly robots that could be self-sustaining.

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The 13-pound wedding cake-looking EcoBot III is just the first step towards that goal and still needs some work. In fact, even though it's capable of operating unaided for seven straight days, it only uses 1% of the energy available in the waste it digests.

"Currently our treatment processes are energy intensive, but if there was a way of replicating the EcoBot III on a larger scale, some processes could be powered on the sewage they are treating," said Julian Dennis, Wessex Water's director of innovation and research, who first had the idea of using waste from sewage to power the robot. "It would eliminate the need for electricity and would mean that in the future, sewage treatment works could become self-sufficient - driving down operational costs and significantly reducing our carbon footprint."

To learn more about this innovative robot, check out the video above.

Photo courtesy of Ioannis Ieropoulos, Bristol Robotics Laboratory.