What would you like for lunch? Maybe, a battery? Although it sounds unusual, this has already been realized by scientists as they develop electronic things you can eat.

Robofood, a program led by Dario Floreano from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Switzerland, has been the pioneer. Together with scientists from Wageningen University, the Netherlands, it has made a new drone (无人机). Half of the parts inside can be eaten! The program plans to create robots that can be eaten and foods that act like robots by mixing food science and robots in a new way.

According to the scientists, the wings (翅膀) of the drone were made from rice cakes glued together using oil and chocolate. This drone can find missing people and carry food or medicine necessary to them. Parts of the drone can be eaten since they meet food safety standards set up by the United Nations.

However, the main problem is finding stronger eatable materials for the drone’s wings to prepare for bad weather and high temperatures—of course, the chocolate may melt (融化) easily.

Robofood also developed an eatable sensor (感应器) to help watch stomach sickness. It’s eaten by the patient to check the conditions inside. Unlike other sensors out there today, it’s designed to be easily broken down, reducing the risk of leaving any remains inside the body.

The invention of Robofood also helps with environmental protection. The world’s first fully eatable batteries can help deal with the growing problem of throwing away used batteries. Some parts of the battery are made of vitamin B₂ and another natural ingredient that can be found in many fruits including apples. So the new battery can be more friendly for nature.

A 550-kg robot helps tea farmers pick Longjing tea in Hangzhou’s West Lake.

Longjing tea, also known as West Lake Dragon Well tea, is a kind of green tea. As one of China’s 10 most famous teas, it has green color, smooth taste, and a beautiful shape.

“Having a beautiful shape is often considered to be good tea. The picking work of such tea leaves is mostly done by hand, and it’s very difficult to be replaced by machines,” said Jia Jiangming, the developer of the robot. However, most of the tea pickers are in their 60s, few are in their 50s, and there are hardly any young people willing to find jobs in the industry.

“If so, the Longjing tea industry may face great difficulty when there remains nobody to help pick the leaves,” Jia said when explaining why his team started to develop tea-picking robots as early as 2019.

Earlier in 2023, Jia’s robot helper developed into its fifth generation (代), lifting the accuracy to 86 percent and improving the picking efficiency (效率) to 1.5 seconds per tea leaf. Compared with the third generation robot, the new robot’s tea-picking success rate (率) rose from 40 percent to 60 percent.

The new generation robot can do as well as a human tea picker. Though the robot is still being tested, they plan to make it better, allowing the tea industry to enjoy the advantages brought by modern in the coming future.