How Found Energy went from ‘self-cannibalizing robots’ to cleaning up heavy industry
Found Energy doesn’t have the typical startup origin story: It began with a space robot that was supposed to eat itself. Now, the company is developing that same technology with an eye toward powering aluminum smelters and long-haul shipping.
Nearly a decade ago, Peter Godart, Found Energy’s co-founder and CEO, was a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He and some colleagues were brainstorming how to power a probe that might visit Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The team was debating the energy density of batteries that might be suitable when a stray thought landed in Godart’s head. The aluminum used to make the spacecraft held more than 10 times the energy of any cutting-edge battery. Why not use the spacecraft’s parts to power itself?
“They gave me a bunch of money to start a program that I lovingly called the ‘self-cannibalizing robot lab,’” Godart told TechCrunch. “We looked at giving robots the ability to consume their vestigial aluminum components for fuel.”
