Living Robot

Xenobots, named after the African clawed frog  are synthetic lifeforms that are designed by computers to perform some desired function and built by combining together different biological tissues. Whether xenobots are robots, organisms, or something else entirely remains a subject of debate among scientists, with one of the researchers saying: "They're neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It's a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism.

Scientists who created world's first 'living' robots, now say they can reproduce Scientists said that the discovery is unlike the reproductive methods ever seen in plants and animals.

 After creating the world’s first living robots, United States-based scientists have discovered that they can now reproduce in a way different from any plant or animal, a report quoting a scientific study stated on Monday. Scientists have called xenobots "the first-ever, self-replicating living robots."

The tiny organisms were unveiled in 2020, after a group of scientists at the University of Vermont, Tufts University and Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering found that they could move, work together in groups and self-heal, the report stated.

Xenobots are sized less than a millimeter, created from the stem cells of the African clawed frog – scientifically known as Xenopus laevis – from where it derives the name. The scientists believe that the new discovery could serve fruitful in the medical field.

Michael Levin, a professor of biology and director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University, told "Frogs have a way of reproducing that they normally use but when you... liberate (the cells) from the rest of the embryo and you give them a chance to figure out how to be in a new environment, not only do they figure out a new way to move, but they also figure out apparently a new way to reproduce."

“These things move around in the dish and make copies of themselves,” Josh Bongard of the University of Vermont, the lead author of the research.

“These are very small, biodegradable and biocompatible machines, and they’re perfectly happy in freshwater,” he said, adding that near-term applications could include collecting microplastics from waterways.

Bongard highlighted that people think robots are metal and ceramic “but it's not so much what a robot is made from but what it does, which is acting on its own on behalf of people”.

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