Tufts Creates Bio Robots

Imagine miniature self-repairing living robots that could move, carry things, and work together—safely delivering drugs inside the human body or helping with environmental remediation. Even more importantly, imagine using such synthetic creations to teach us how to control the formation of organs for regenerative medicine. Now researchers at Tufts and the University of Vermont report that they have created such living machines, what they call Xenobots, that might one day do just that. 

While most machines are constructed from materials like steel and plastic, which can degrade or break over time and have harmful side effects, living systems made from self-renewing and biocompatible materials would avoid those negative consequences. An important part of creating the self-renewal feature will come from understanding how cells cooperate to create functional organisms in nature, and then using that knowledge to create functional bodies in novel arrangements. The researchers foresee an iterative process in which the synthetic organisms allow them to test theories of body development in nature, which in turn will inform improved robot design. To create the Xenobots, the UVM research team first used computer simulations to help figure out how such living machines would work, testing a variety of shapes and cellular arrangements. The simulations tested different designs to select a desired behavior, allowing failed designs to “die” and successful designs to survive in a virtual world.  

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https//now.tufts.edu/articles/new-living-machines-are-created-lab