Scientists Say They Have Created Self-Replicating ‘Living Robots’

A marriage of technology and biology has produced what are being billed as “living robots” that can reproduce.

Last year, scientists presented what lead researcher Joshua Bongard of the University of Vermont called “novel living machines,” which amounted to so-called robots that were grown from stem cells taken from frog embryos, according to Science Alert.

He said his “xenobots” were “neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It’s a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism.”

And now, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, the research team has used artificial intelligence to help the “xenobots” to reproduce.”

“Here we show that clusters of cells, if freed from a developing organism, can similarly find and combine loose cells into clusters that look and move like they do, and that this ability does not have to be specifically evolved or introduced by genetic manipulation. Finally, we show that artificial intelligence can design clusters that replicate better, and perform useful work as they do so,” the study’s authors wrote.

“This suggests that future technologies may, with little outside guidance, become more useful as they spread, and that life harbors surprising behaviors just below the surface, waiting to be uncovered.”

In the study, cells combined with each other when left to incubate produced a new generation of cells.

“This form of perpetuation, previously unseen in any organism, arises spontaneously over days rather than evolving over millennia. We also show how artificial intelligence methods can design assemblies that postpone loss of replicative ability and perform useful work as a side effect of replication,” the researchers wrote.

The study’s authors said they have found a new way to create life.