Comment by WillAdams
3 hours ago
One interesting mention I can recall of one was in a airport-kiosk type thriller/science fiction novel where a humanoid robot developed by the military wound up in the jungles of South America assisting a group of disparate individuals --- it made a small Stirling engine using a lathe to power itself from the communal campfire --- always wondered if the physics of that would work out numerically.
Most likely not if it was made from stuff you can find the jungle but it is a very creative bit. I've had one running of a 10' solar concentrator, it was tiny (no more than a few hundred mW) but still, to see sunlight directly converted into motion without any steps in between is quite a neat thing.
I think this is ‘Solo’ by Robert Mason.