News Article: Scientists made tiny xenobots out of frog cells. Now they say those robots can reproduce.

[Bamaro]

In January 2020, a team of scientists from the University of Vermont, Tufts University and Harvard University took stem cells from African clawed frog embryos and formed them into tiny living creatures called xenobots. The xenobots, which are less than 0.04 inches wide, were able to move on their own, communicate amongst each other and heal themselves from an injury, making them the first-ever living robots.

But over one year later, the computer-designed creatures have begun to do "something that's never been observed before."

What the team of scientists discovered was the xenobots would move around their environment and find single cells. They would gather hundreds of these cells at once and then assemble an offspring inside their mouth. A few days later, the offspring became a new xenobot that functioned as the others. The group published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS on Monday.

"This is profound," Michael Levin, director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University and co-leader of the new research, said in a statement. "These cells have the genome of a frog, but, freed from becoming tadpoles, they use their collective intelligence, a plasticity, to do something astounding."

So, have they become self aware?

Living robots can now reproduce using artificial intelligence (usatoday.com)

 

[crimsonkelly]

What can go wrong here?

 

[TIDE-HSV]

Gives me chills...

 

[jthomas666]

I, for one, welcome our new frog-bot overlords.

 

[B1GTide]

I really hope that they have security in mind - this could really go sideways.

 

[Bamabuzzard]

Just because we can do it, doesn't mean we need to...

 

[TexasBama]

“The best body shape wound up looking very similar to the iconic video game character, Pac-Man. When they took the Pac-Man shape and put it in a petri dish, it began the reproduction process and was successful.”

remember this the next time you have an itch

 

[AUDub]

I really hope that they have security in mind - this could really go sideways.

These are so mind numbingly simple that the idea of them causing a "Grey goo" scenario is laughable.

But the applications could be huge. Imagine these tiny little guys making congestive heart failure a thing of the past.

 

[jthomas666]

These are so mind numbingly simple that the idea of them causing a "Grey goo" scenario is laughable.

That's just what they want you to think...

 

[TexasBama]

That's just what they want you to think...

Dub obviously never saw The Langoliers