US scientists create world’s first-ever living robots – and they’re now able to self-replicate

While self-replicating biotechnology may spark concern, the researchers said that ‘the living machines were entirely contained in a lab and easily extinguished’, are biodegradable, and ‘regulated by ethics experts’, CNN reported. — Technology vector created by freepik - www.freepik.com

In 2020, US scientists created the first living robots, called xenobots. Now researchers have discovered a new form of biological reproduction – xenobots can self-replicate – in a way that is unlike anything seen in plants or animals, reports say.

According to a news release by Wyss Institute, scientists at the University of Vermont, Tufts University, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have discovered “an entirely new form of biological reproduction”. Applying this discovery, they’ve created the “first-ever, self-replicating living robots”. The results of the new research were published Nov 29, 2021, in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences.