A team of US researchers managed to create the first living specimens of machines, developed with animal tissue. They may be used in medicine or even in the environmental field.
Behind the US Department of Defense-funded research are two biologists, Michael Levin and Douglas Blackiston, and two robotics experts, Josh Bongard and Sam Kriegman. Scientists used cells taken from the heart of frogs. The material was then processed into supercomputers that helped come up with the most promising way to aggregate them and try to predict their behavior.
The result was a millimeter-diameter biological machine with hundreds of cells capable of moving in a direction determined by scientists. “It’s not a traditional robot or an animal species. It’s a new kind of artifact: a living, programmable organism.”, stressed Josh Bongard.
The supercomputer used in the research is from the University of Vermont, Canada, and the work is being accompanied by scientists from Tufts University, Massachusetts. “We can design many applications for these robots that other machines can’t do,” said Michal Levin, head of the Center for Regenerative Biology and Development at Tufts University. “They could be used to collect nasty or even radioactive compounds, collect microplastics in the oceans or travel in the arteries to remove obstructions.”, explained the scientist.
The reconfigurable organisms that cells have formed, which also have the ability to reconstitute themselves if cut, can either move coherently and explore an aquatic environment for days or weeks or move small grains to a location spontaneously and collectively.
“It’s a step towards using computer-designed organisms to administer drugs intelligently,” said Bongard.
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