Xenobots
Forget losing your job to robots, Scientists have created robots that can reproduce!!
A groundbreaking feat recently occurred for artificial intelligence and robots alike when the first-ever reproduction was witnessed in robots called “Xenobots. Well, the term “Xenobot” isn’t brand new but was reported in 2020 as the tiny “programmable” living things made of several thousand frog stem cells. Since then, Xenobots have been in the global headlines because of the evolutions shown by them.
In 2020, scientists created the first-ever living, programmable robot by assembling frog cells. These pioneer Xenobots could move around in fluids, and scientists claimed they could be useful for monitoring radioactivity, pollutants, drugs, or diseases. Early Xenobots survived for up to ten days.
The second wave of Xenobots, created in early 2021, showed unexpected new properties. These included self-healing and longer life. They also showed a capacity to cooperate in swarms, for example by massing into groups.
Just a few days back, the same team of biology, robotics, and computer scientists at the University of Vermont, Tufts University, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University unveiled a new kind of Xenobot. Like previous Xenobots, they were created using artificial intelligence to virtually test billions of prototypes, sidestepping the lengthy trial-and-error process in the lab. But the latest Xenobots have a crucial difference: this time, they can self-replicate.
Yes, you read it correctly, Xenobots can self-replicate!! But how?
Okay, let’s think about a robot. What picture came to your mind?
Isn’t the picture resembling a futuristic steel figurine with wires that are modeled around human appearance and activities? Supported by software, such robots become “alive,”. But these Xenobots are not your classic sci-fi cult film robots. They’re extremely tiny and neither robot nor animal. In fact, the best possible way to explain a Xenobot is by calling it a “living, programmable organism.”
Now, let’s go through the steps followed by scientists to create Xenobots. Xenobots are designed by using skin and cardiac stem cells derived from the African frog, Xenopus laevis. The UVM team first spent months running an evolutionary algorithm on the supercomputer cluster at the University of Vermont’s advanced computing core to design and test the various shapes and functions these synthetic life forms might be able to use for self-replication. Once their design was sufficiently refined, the team took a bunch of individual Xenopus stem cells and assembled them into the approximate shape specified by the algorithm using a set of minuscule forceps and electrodes based on AI’s blueprint.
It takes around 3000 cells to make a fully functional Xenobot which can operate for up to two weeks at a time using their embryonic energy stores. Now once these cells were put together, they began to self-organize, using their cardiac cell contractions for locomotion to explore their environment. Researchers also observed emergent swarm behaviors with groups of Xenobots working together to push and gather microscopic pellets into centralized piles within their aquatic environments.
Researchers then realized that by cutting out a notch in each Xenobot and making it look like a microscopic Pac-Man, the bots could individually collect and shift even larger amounts of pellets using far less energy. This allowed the Xenobots to operate more efficiently and for longer time periods before running out of energy.
Now here’s where things get really wild, the researchers have found that by replacing the pellets with individual Xenopus stem cells, the Xenobots can gather enough cells to create a second generation of themselves. Essentially they reproduced creating babies that would self-assemble into functional Xenobots after a brief incubation period. Thus, the parent Xenobots make babies as random frog cells are added to the dish and continue to do it till new cells as raw material are provided to them.
As a result, we have robots that can move on their own, heal on their own and now of course reproduce on their own.
What’s the purpose of Xenobots?
While it is now common knowledge that the world’s first robot reproduction has taken place through Xenobots, there is still a lot of debate surrounding the purpose of these Xenobots. The researchers who created the new Xenobots say their main value is in demonstrating advances in biology, AI, and robotics. The UVM team hopes to further develop Xenobot technology into something a bit more functional using them to potentially deliver drug molecules to specific parts of the human body OR having them gather and remove microplastics from waterways.
Future robots made from organic materials might be more eco-friendly because they could be designed to decompose rather than persist. They might help address health problems in humans, animals, and the environment. They might contribute to regenerative medicine or cancer therapy.
Xenobots could also inspire art and new perspectives on life. Strangely, Xenobot “offspring” are made in their parents’ image but are not made of or from them. As such, they replicate without truly reproducing in the biological sense.
It must be noted here that Xenobots are alive in the technical sense but they’re not individual organisms capable of surviving on their own or replicating without any external assistance.
Risks and Future
Some people may find Xenobots exhilarating. Others may react with concern, or even terror, to the notion of self-replicating biotechnology or to the robots which can reproduce, create copies of themselves or make babies.
For the team of scientists, the goal is a deeper understanding. Yet the research team also recognises legal and ethical concerns with their work. Science is not always revolutionary, it can also be devastating. While we can’t believe that’s the case for current Xenobots, it may be so for future developments. The last two years have taught us that if one virus can threaten human existence then reproductive robots in the wrong hands can do much worse. There’s a bigger chance of its spelling doom.
Although Xenobots are not currently made from human embryos or stem cells, it is conceivable they could be. Their creation raises similar questions about creating and modifying ongoing life forms that require regulation.
At present, Xenobots do not live long and only replicate for a few generations. Still, as the researchers say, living matter can behave in unforeseen ways, and these will not necessarily be benign.
We should also consider potential impacts on the non-human world. Human, animal, and environmental health are intimately linked, and organisms introduced by humans can wreak inadvertent havoc on ecosystems.
What limits should we place on science to avoid a real-life “grey goo” scenario? It’s too early to be completely prescriptive. But regulators, scientists, and society should carefully weigh up the risks and rewards.
References
Living robots made in a lab have found a new way to self-replicate, researchers say
World’s first living robots can now reproduce, scientists say
AI-Fuelled Xenobots Are Capable Of Reproduction: But What Is Their Purpose?
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