EATR - The Vegetable Munching Robot

As reported by The Economist some time ago, the US military has partnered with Robotic Technology of Washington, DC in order to produce the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (a.k.a. EATR). The robot is expected to achieve energetic autonomy by eating plants.  Although this might seem as a far fetched idea, the main objective is to produce an enduring autonomous robot that will be able to operate for extended periods of time without needing the traditional refueling process. The robot will gorge itself on vegetable materials such as leaves and wood in order to fuel its internal steam power generator. The robot is still a concept and production has not begun yet but you can imagine its future appearance from the advanced CG shown below. From the presentation featured on the Robotic Technology website we can also extract further details about the upcoming vegetarian robot.  It is important to note that, despite the rumors about the robot being able to feed itself from soldier's dead bodies, the robot will consume vegetable substances strictly (making it actually vegan) as announced on a press release. As a final remark, besides having to work hard on the internal combustion steam engine, the autonomous navigation systems, the telemetry instrumentation, and all the other aspects of the robot, they would really need to polish their graphics design.