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Baby steps for first living robots

20th January 2020

US researchers have succeeded in creating living machines for the first time, assembling tiny robots that can move independently, using cells from African clawed frogs.

Created at the Allen Discovery Research Center in Massachusetts, the robots are less than 1mm long and have been designed by a supercomputer using an 'evolutionary algorithm'. Director Michael Levin announced "They have never before existed on Earth and that these "living, programmable organisms" are "entirely new lifeforms."

Among those most successful are a robot with two stumpy legs which it uses to propel itself along on its 'chest', and another with a hole in the centre, which researchers have adapted, to allow it to carry tiny payloads. Using tweezers and cauterising tools, scientists sculpted skin and heart cells from early-stage African clawed frog embryos. The robots have been named 'Xenobots' after the frog’s Latin name, Xenopus laevis.

Usually, robots are made using metal and plastic, for strength and durability. However, these robots made from living tissue arguably have several advantages. They can heal themselves if wounded, and when no longer required they decay in just the same ways as other living organisms.

Such unique features may mean future iterations clean up ocean microplastics, digest toxic waste, deliver drugs and remove arterial plaque inside the body, or offer innovative treatments for birth defects, cancer and later-life conditions. Xenobots may be engineered with blood vessels, nervous systems and rudimentary eyes or using mammalian cells enabling them to operate on dry land. They plan "to make them to scale" according to Levin.

Ethical questions over the moral status of these creations bring longstanding theory into practice. Thomas Douglas, a Practical Ethics research fellow at Oxford University, in the UK, asked, "At what point would they become beings with interests that ought to be protected?"

He considers “they’d acquire moral significance only if they included neural tissue that enabled some kind of mental life, such as the ability to experience pain.” However, he concedes others “are more liberal about moral status. They think that all living creatures have [moral] interests.” Whether Xenobots are classified as living creatures or machines looks set to become a hotly debated topic.

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