Scientists build first living robots that can reproduce

In a potential breakthrough for regenerative medicine, scientists have created the first-ever living robots that can reproduce. The millimetre-sized living machines, called Xenobots 3.0, are neither traditional robots nor a species of animal, but living, programmable organisms. Made from frog cells, the computer-designed organisms, created by a US team, gather single cells inside a Pac-Man-shaped'mouth' and release'babies' that look and move like their parents. Self-replicating living bio-robots could enable more direct, personalised drug treatment for traumatic injury, birth defects, cancer, ageing and more. Xenobots 3.0 can gather hundreds of single cells, compress them and assemble them into'babies' released from their Pac-Man-shaped mouths Xenobots are neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal, but a living, programmable organism.