Scientists Who Unveiled World's First Living Robots in 2020, Can Now Reproduce

The world's first living robots created of stem cells from African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) which could be controlled to do certain tasks—were disclosed by a team of scientists early last year.

According to Katherine J. Wu of Smithsonian, the sand grain-sized cells can effectively manipulate fine details, whiz around Petri plates, and even self-heal.

"Most individuals consider of robots as being built of metals and ceramics, but it's not so much what a robot is made of as it is what it does," co-author Josh Bongard, a computer scientist at the University of Vermont, tells CNN's Katie Hunt. "It's a robot in one sense, but it's also a plainly living thing formed from biologically unaltered frog cells."

The team has been striving to leverage the capabilities of these small robots, dubbed "xenobots" after the clawed frog genus Xenopus, throughout their original investigation. According to Nicola Davis of the Guardian, the researchers has claimed that xenobots may now procreate in such a manner which is unlike any living organism known to science: by scooping up free-floating cells and combining together into fresh groupings. The results were released in the proceedings Of the national Academy Academy of Sciences this week. 

"When you free (the cells) from the rest of the embryo and give them an opportunity to figure out how to live in a new environment, not only do they figure out a new method to move, but they also figure out presumably a new way to reproduce," says co-author Michael Levin, a biologist at Tufts University. 

The scientists employed a supercomputer to generate a design for an unique form of life in order to construct the xenobots in the first place. They took stem cells from the frogs' embryos and nurtured them while reshaping them Frankenstein-style utilizing small forceps and an electrode into the form predicted by the supercomputer. According to a news statement, the xenobots can then be taught to perform certain jobs, and they've become increasingly advanced ever since.

Once xenobots cluster, they may produce spheres of roughly 3,000 cells in about five days. The robo-blob can move about and push single cells together to make new xenobots since they can cooperate collectively, according to Carissa Wong of New Scientist.

According to Tom McKay of Gizmodo, it's a concept called kinematic self-replication, which is only seen in molecules and not biological organisms.

"One [xenobot] parent may start a pile, and then a second parent can push more cells into that pile by chance, and so forth, creating the kid," says co-author Josh Bongard, an evolutionary robotics expert at the University of Vermont.

However, the number of younger robots that may be developed is limited. "It turns out how these xenobots will only reproduce once, producing children in one generation. However, the children are too young and frail to bear grandkids "According to Bongard, who spoke to the Guardian, Furthermore, the xenobots can only really breed under certain circumstances. The scientists employed artificial intelligence to evaluate billions of possible body forms and compositions on a supercomputer to work more effectively. Rather than a sphere, a Pac-Man-like C-shaped bot was shown to be the most effective at accumulating individual stem cells in its mouth and combining them into new baby bots, according to CNN.

"These computers were not programmed in the manner we normally think of programming code by the AI. It moulded and formed itself into the Pac-Man shape "Bongard tells CNN about it. "In essence, the programme is the shape. The xenobots' behaviour is influenced by the form, amplifying this really remarkable process."

Despite the fact that this study is still in its early stages, the team has great expectations for the xenobots. According to Smithsonian, they might be employed in medicine (for example, to assist carry medications within the body) or even to clean up toxic elements with future research.

In the news release, Bongard states, "There's all this intrinsic creativity in life." "We want to know more about that—and how we might guide and push it in new directions."

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