Scientists at Vermont University’s laboratory, led by Professor Josh Bongard, have developed a new type of robot called the “Xenobots”. These mini-systems are self-producing and built from organic frog cells.
The team’s approach to creating the robots is different from others as their components are built from “fantastically intelligent machines”, according to a report from science focus. The robots can be constructed from ordinary, non-genetically modified cells.
For the experiment, artificial intelligence was used to simulate the development of a group of frog cells in a virtual Petri dish in order to choose the cells best suited for specific tasks. This technique of creating a population of virtual xenobots proved much quicker than traditional methods and allowed for the artificial intelligence to delete poorly-performing bots and create modified copies of the surviving ones.
Scientists then began creating a design for the xenobots in the real world. While this process took a week to create 30-40 xenobots, the team found that the robots could self-reproduce under certain conditions. A newer, better version was created using artificial intelligence to control the process to monitor the nanobots.
The researchers note that xenobots could have a variety of applications in medical and environmental studies, as well as in production processes.