Scientists create new ‘living robots’ that have memory and are able to assemble themselves

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “We are witnessing the remarkable plasticity of cellular collectives, which build a rudimentary new ‘body’ that is quite distinct from their default - in this case, a frog - despite having a completely normal genome,” said Michael Levin, distinguished professor of biology and director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University, and corresponding author of the study. It is amazing that cells can spontaneously take on new roles and create new body plans and behaviors without long periods of evolutionary selection for those features.” Researchers say the process is not dissimilar from the normal way of creating a robot – but just uses biological tissue to do so. Only we use cells and tissues rather than artificial components to build the shape and create predictable behavior.” said senior scientist Doug Blackiston, who co-first authored the study with research technician Emma Lederer. “On the biology end, this approach is helping us understand how cells communicate as they interact with one another during development, and how we might better control those interactions.” At the same time, scientists from the University of Vermont were running computer simulations of xenobots working both together and apart to find how their shapes changed their behaviours.