Biobots are programmable living organisms, i.e. living beings that obey the directives of their creators.
An American research team, made up of biologists; Michael Levin and Douglas Blackiston, and two robotics experts; Josh Bongard and Sam Kriegman have created the first biobots, programmable living organisms.
The creation of this biobot has followed a process that could not have happened without the Deep Green supercomputer at the University of Vermont. For months,
The result is a small biological machine (created from hundreds of frog cells) capable of replicating the behavior determined by its creator (in this case, scientists). From this process, scientists have configured the biobot into 4 types of behaviors:
- Object manipulation, biobots target and push particles in their environment,
- Object transport, biobots could be created with a hole in the middle that could be used to transport objects,
- Collective behavior, several biobots could collaborate to perform movements,
- Resistance, it has been proven that if the biobot breaks it tends to rebuild itself.
This is only a proof of concept, but it opens the door to getting different cells to build specific structures, and therefore also behaviors defined by the creator. This is a revolution in areas such as:
- Regenerative medicine, since parts of the body can be rebuilt or their regeneration can be encouraged.
- The development of robotics, making machines have behaviors very similar to biological ones.
- Automation of the manufacture of computer designs of bespoke living systems for bespoke functions.
- Application of Artificial Intelligence to organisms.
It is the first step in a revolution of new materials and as Josh Bongard, one of its creators, assures. “It seems that these biobots are a third class of animated matter: they are not robots and they are not, strictly speaking, organisms. I think these biobots will force biologists and philosophers to rethink our definitions of life and what a machine is.”
