| Xenobot | |
|---|---|
 A xenobot design discovered in simulation (left) and the deployed organism (right) built from frog skin (green) and heart muscle (red) | |
| Industry | Robotics, Synthetic biology |
| Application | Medicine, environmental remediation |
| Dimensions | Microscale |
| Fuel source | Nutrients |
| Self-propelled | Yes |
| Components | Frog cells |
| Inventor | Sam Kriegman, Douglas Blackiston, Michael Levin, Josh Bongard |
| Invented | 2020 |
Xenobots, named after the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis),[1] are synthetic lifeforms that are designed by computers to perform some desired function and built by combining together different biological tissues.[1][2][3][4][5][6] There is debate among scientists whether xenobots are robots, organisms, or something else entirely.
- ^ a b "Meet Xenobot, an Eerie New Kind of Programmable Organism". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028.
- ^ Kriegman, Sam; Blackiston, Douglas; Levin, Michael; Bongard, Josh (13 January 2020). "A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 117 (4): 1853–1859. Bibcode:2020PNAS..117.1853K. doi:10.1073/pnas.1910837117. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 6994979. PMID 31932426.
- ^ Sokol, Joshua (2020-04-03). "Meet the Xenobots: Virtual Creatures Brought to Life". The New York Times.
- ^ Sample, Ian (2020-01-13). "Scientists use stem cells from frogs to build first living robots". The Guardian.
- ^ Yeung, Jessie (2020-01-13). "Scientists have built the world's first living, self-healing robots". CNN.
- ^ "A research team builds robots from living cells". The Economist.