[liberationtech] Scientists use stem cells from frogs to build first living robots

[John Ohno]

As with any use of the term 'first' in science reporting, this is a little
dubious (and the researchers involved are probably aware of the prior art
in this domain).

Some previous work:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/biomedical/bionics/rat-brain-robot-grows-up
https://web.archive.org/web/20090530045152/http://radio.weblogs.com:80/0105910/2002/12/19.html
https://dark-mountain.net/theoteknosis-part-i-of-pond-brains-and-humanity-2-0/


On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 1:26 PM Rand Strauss <Rand at peoplecount.org> wrote:

> Note that they don’t reproduce.
> And currently, there’s no "we" in the US…
> -r
>
> On Jan 13, 2020, at 9:42 PM, Paola Di Maio <paola.dimaio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks
> I have seen the news this morning but had not had the time to process this
> info
> I find this shocking and potentially lethal, because we dont know how the
> new
> species will interact with natural species. Paid for by US taxpayers and
> sponsored by Defense, is even more worrying.  I d suggest you guys in the
> US start working on bioethics legislation to keep a tab
> at a minimum these things should not be released in the wild,  and should
> be strictly regulated, imho
> PDM
>
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 2:41 PM Yosem Companys <ycompanys at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/13/scientists-use-stem-cells-from-frogs-to-build-first-living-robots
>>
>> Researchers in the US have created the first living machines by
>> assembling cells from African clawed frogs into tiny robots that move
>> around under their own steam.  “These are entirely new lifeforms. They have
>> never before existed on Earth,” said Michael Levin, the director of the
>> Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. “They
>> are living, programmable organisms.” The robots, which are less than 1mm
>> long, are designed by an “evolutionary algorithm” that runs on a
>> supercomputer. The program starts by generating random 3D configurations of
>> 500 to 1,000 skin and heart cells. Each design is then tested in a virtual
>> environment, to see, for example, how far it moves when the heart cells are
>> set beating. The best performers are used to spawn more designs, which
>> themselves are then put through their paces.  Because heart cells
>> spontaneously contract and relax, they behave like miniature engines that
>> drive the robots along until their energy reserves run out. The cells have
>> enough fuel inside them for the robots to survive for a week to 10 days
>> before keeling over.  The scientists waited for the computer to churn out
>> 100 generations before picking a handful of designs to build in the lab.
>> They used tweezers and cauterising tools to sculpt early-stage skin and
>> heart cells scraped from the embryos of African clawed frogs, Xenopus
>> laevis. The source of the cells led the scientists to call their creations
>> “xenobots”.  Xenobots might be built with blood vessels, nervous systems
>> and sensory cells, to form rudimentary eyes. By building them out of
>> mammalian cells, they could live on dry land. When damaged, living robots
>> can heal their wounds, and once their task is done they fall apart, just as
>> natural organisms decay when they die.  Their unique features mean that
>> future versions of the robots might be deployed to clean up microplastic
>> pollution in the oceans, locate and digest toxic materials, deliver drugs
>> in the body, or remove plaque from artery walls. “The aim is to understand
>> the software of life,” Levin said. “If you think about birth defects,
>> cancer, age-related diseases, all of these things could be solved if we
>> knew how to make biological structures, to have ultimate control over
>> growth and form.” The research is funded by the US Defense Advanced
>> Research Projects Agency’s lifelong learning machines programme, which aims
>> to recreate biological learning processes in machines.
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