A living robot made from frog skin cells.
On March 31, Tufts University in the United States published a paper in "Science-Robotics".
Xenobot living robot was first proposed last year, named after the source of living cells-Xenopus laevis.
In order to make a spherical living robot, Michael Levin and his colleagues from Tufts University extracted tissues from 24-hour-old frog embryos.
The old version of living robots relied on the contraction of cardiomyocytes to push the surface forward, while these new living robots swim faster and are propelled by the hair-like structure on their surface.
"The most basic discovery is that when you liberate skin cells from the normal environment and give them a chance to reimagine the multicellular structure, they can build other things instead of the usual ones.
These living robots with an appearance between a quarter of a millimeter and a half millimeter operate as a group of robots, which means that a group of living robots can work together to complete a task.
Douglas Blackiston, a member of the Tufts University research team, said that because living robots are made from cells, they will eventually decompose and be completely biodegradable.
"Robot experts have been studying swarm intelligence for a long time, and biologists have been studying swarm intelligence in organisms," said Josh Bongard, a member of the research team and the University of Vermont in the United States.
In the past, scientists tried to make living robots, such as wireless control of cockroaches, which involved the manipulation of living animals, causing ethical issues.
Auke Ijspeert of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, who was not involved in the study, said that from an ethical point of view, this method may be the least problematic because everything is done in vitro.
But are living robots more like living bodies or traditional robots? "I didn't get any answers.
Related paper information: https://doi.
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