This Robotic Black Box Keeps You Warm

H-agent, the robot is called, has wheels, sensors, and a hefty amount of phase-change material. Phase-change material (or PCM for short) stores or releases energy when it changes from a solid to a liquid (or any other combination of phases) or vice versa. So for example, let's say you've got a cup of coffee that's really really hot. You could put some kind of PCM into it, and the PCM would melt, absorbing the excess heat and making your coffee drinkable. Then, as the coffee cooled down, the PCM would re-solidify, releasing all that stored heat keeping your coffee warm for much longer.

The idea won designers Andreas Meinhardt and Daniel Abendroth second prize in the International Design Competition of Prix Émile Hermès 2011, though they don't give any idea of how long it might be before the H-Agent makes it to your home.

H-agent takes that heat storage concept and mobilizes it for the purposes of using energy more efficiently and keeping you cozy when it's cold out. The robot can sense heat (like an oven, a fire, or anything else), and when it does, it drives over and hangs out, letting it's pile o' PCM suck down as much energy as possible. Then, it'll follow you around, acting like a little space heater as its PCM re-solidifies, up until the PCM has emitted all of its stored up heat. It's cute, and it's mostly free, since all Hagent does is take heat that you've already produced and shift it around a little bit.

H-agent is still at a prototype phase. At the moment, the robot appears to be powered by batteries, but if there was some way of using, say, a Stirling engine to charge it up, you'd have yourself a heat-powered, heat-seeking, heat-storing heater robot.

Watch the prototype in action in the embedded video below.

IEEE Spectrum