MEET THE FIRST LIVING ROBOT: XENOBOT

Have you ever imagined the real life with the movies of science fiction? I am pretty sure you all have did that? Those movies always centre about keeping robots in place of living organisms. Well, technology has never failed to surprise us with its new innovations. Those imaginations are no more far from being a reality.

Yes! Recently, a team of scientists have been successful in creating the world’s first ‘living robots’ named Xenobots that can heal by themselves.

This new living creature is a combination of AI with Biology. Being designed on supercomputers, later biologists used stem cells of the embryo of African clawed frogs, Xenopus laevis to build the living programmable organism. Composed of only skin cells and heart muscle cells, xenobots are likely to be a sloppy blob of moving flesh. These are just about 1 millimetre wide and doesn’t possess any limbs.

The newly created organism has the probability of being used in many applications. Research says they have holes on their body which can be used for drugs delivery in future. Studies also say that xenobots can widely used in medical treatment including the disease of cancer. As these creature have the property of swimming, they can also be used for underwater research and for cleaning of polluted oceans by collecting microplastics and cleaning up radioactive waste. Moreover, their biodegradable nature can have impacts on technologies made with metal and plastics.

Though scientists are looking forward to have even more complex version of Xenobots, yet they admit that there is possibility of harmful consequences. Humans still can’t predict how could be the exact behaviour of this new organism. However, researchers say that it is unlikely that the AI -that plays a significant role in building these robots- could have evil intentions. "At the moment though it is difficult to see how an AI could create harmful organisms any easier than a talented biologist with bad intentions could," the researcher’s website stated.

- Satabdi Bora