This is the First LIVING Robot and it's Unbelievable

What you’re about to see is the first-ever living robot created by researchers in the US. This is the xenobot. Under one millimeter in size, it’s unlike most robots in that it’s not made of plastic or metal, but entirely of organic cellular material. It can move forward, turn around, sometimes spin in circles, and if you flip it on its back, it will flip itself back over. It’s a human-made robot, but it’s alive.

Now, you might be asking, what exactly is a living robot? That would be a perfectly reasonable question, especially given that it’s being deemed a brand new life form that has never existed before. But before we can understand what it does and what that might mean for the future, we have to understand what it actually is.

Researchers wanted to figure out if they could take real, live cells and make them behave in a way that the researchers wanted them to, much like a robot made of other materials would do. They took two different types of frog cells: skin and heart cells. Heart cells naturally contract while skin cells don’t, so the idea was, “If we can put skin cells and heart cells together in a specific way, maybe we can create a functional structure that can move.” And that’s exactly what the researchers tried to do.

If you take a look at this video of one of their successful creations, you can see that the blue cells are non-contracting skin cells, while the green and red ones are contracting heart cells. This particular combination of cells gives you the motion you’re seeing in both the animation and the actual result below. It took a long time to get here, so using computer science and evolutionary algorithms, a supercomputer made millions of iterations of these combinations of skin and muscle cells to figure out which combinations make the best movements. Evolutionary algorithms worked much like natural selection to improve upon existing models, ultimately ending in what would be deemed the most fit versions.

The researchers then used these computer-made designs to create the real thing. This means taking one cell at a time and sticking it to the next one; it’s an extremely laborious process. Luckily, cells have a natural tendency to want to stick together, but it still meant a human technician going through a really intense process one bit at a time.

So what exactly makes them robots? Once the scientists understood which combinations would make a cell move in a straight line or spin in circles, they could tell the supercomputer, “We want this type of movement or this type of action; how do we get that?” The supercomputer calculates it and then gives them a design that will ultimately create that action. If the xenobots are designed in the exact right way, they can move in the exact way we want them to. We end up with cellular organisms that have been designed by humans to act in predictable manners like robots.

The interesting part is related to something called “emergent behavior.” While we might understand how a single cell works, when you put a group of them together, sometimes emergent behavior or properties arise. The single cell itself can’t do certain things, but when it’s in a big group, it can. Humans are perfect examples; we have trillions of cells in our body, none of which have consciousness or the ability to think on their own. But when combined in a particular way, consciousness emerges.

What surprised the scientists about the xenobots is that sometimes they would change their movement. They might turn around and go back where they came from or link up with another xenobot and travel around. If they were cut in half, they would put themselves back together. These xenobots weren’t completely predictable, but that was part of the research. If we put combinations of cells in certain ways and get the actions we want, what types of other emergent behaviors could we see to better understand the whole system and improve xenobots in the future?

This is what makes xenobots different from traditional robots, which are made up of individual parts that, when put together, create an intelligent whole. Xenobots are made up of individual cells that have the inherent qualities of life and can communicate to form tissues, which make organs, ultimately coming together to create us.

So what does it all mean? The long-term implications are significant. You don’t need to worry about a robot uprising anytime soon, and we can’t really tell these xenobots to do anything yet. But the more we learn about them, the more potential there is, and there are some exciting suggested future uses for xenobots. Picture a swarm of xenobots made using your own cells that are deployed internally in your body to help remove a brain tumor. Because they’re your own cells, your body won’t reject them. Or imagine cleaning up artery plaque in your body using xenobots.

This generation of xenobots was made using only skin and heart cells, but future ones could use photo receptors or other types of cells to help them navigate and understand their environments. Why not build some with components from blood vessels, nervous systems, or sensory cells to create a rudimentary eye? Outside the body, consider the ocean, which is littered with plastic pollution, particularly microplastics. Perhaps these xenobots could target and break down microplastics or collect them for easier removal. The great part is that, because they’re biological, they naturally break down. In this study, the xenobots lasted between seven to ten days before they stopped functioning and broke down.

While these suggested uses are far down the line, they show the massive potential of these xenobots, unlike plastic and metals, which would be detected as foreign objects in your body and cause problems.

What does the future look like? One of the biggest questions right now is the ethical implications. Once we start creating these robots that have cognitive capabilities and can sense things, who will protect their rights? Do they become organisms that ought to have rights? If these are organisms actively participating in our world and some can feel pain, what does that mean? Where do we draw the line? The researchers acknowledged this as uncharted territory and emphasized the importance of having these discussions early in the development of this technology so that the public can understand, governments can make informed decisions, and we can feel positive about using it.

Personally, I find this research fascinating, leading me to feel both excited and terrified. The potential to address climate change or improve human health with xenobots is amazing, but at what cost? How do we prepare for what these biological robots could be used for, and how do we address concerns that they could be considered living organisms made of human or animal cells? We’ve had discussions about artificial intelligence and robots, but at what point do we deem them to have rights or feelings? This will escalate that issue because these beings are made of biological cells.

I am really curious about what everyone else thinks. To me, it’s both exciting and terrifying. I don’t think a robot apocalypse is near, but it’s something to keep in mind. Just in case one of the xenobots is watching this video in the future, I promise I never questioned your good intent!

I hope this video was useful and interesting to you. Many people asked for a deeper dive into xenobots because it’s a significant discovery, and I thought it was worthwhile to understand more of the intricacies. Let me know if you have any other questions, and comment down below. What do you think of this technology? Are you nervous? I want to hear your opinions; I’m curious about what everyone else is thinking. Thanks for watching! Make sure to like the video, leave a comment, and subscribe for more interesting science videos.