It's a concept that currently only exists in sci–fi movies. But scientists in China are developing the world's first'pregnancy robot' capable of carrying a baby to term and giving birth. The humanoid will be equipped with an artificial womb that receives nutrients through a hose, experts said. A prototype is expected to be released next year, with a selling price of around 100,000 yuan ( 10,000). Dr Zhang Qifeng, who founded the company Kaiwa Technology, is developing the machine.

It might sound like a far-fetched plot from dystopian science fiction, but novel research could soon allow parents to grow their baby in a bag. Just like the 2023 film The Pod Generation, artificial wombs could support an infant from conception to birth without any need for pregnancy. Although most of the population remains sceptical of this revolutionary change to motherhood, Gen Z seems ready to embrace the technology with open arms. In a survey conducted by religious issues think tank, Theos, 42 per cent of people aged 18-24 said they would support'growing a foetus entirely outside of a woman's body'. In the first large-scale survey of its kind, as part of its Motherhood vs The Machine podcast, Theos asked 2,292 people for their views on artificial wombs.

"We should be much more worried about population collapse….If there aren't enough people for Earth, then there definitely won't be enough for Mars," he opined. Musk's statements brought the world's falling birthrate to the forefront of social consciousness. For nearly a century, fertility rates have been decreasing globally. The result is what scientists are describing as a "worldwide infertility crisis." In 2017, scientists created a "BioBag" that functioned as an artificial womb, and they used it to grow a baby lamb.

Scientists in China created an AI robot system that cares for human embryos growing in artificial wombs, a report from The Independent reveals. When we think of AI-monitored humans in artificial wombs we think of the dystopian sci-fi future presented in'The Matrix'. However, the researchers behind the very real project believe their new system will be a force for good that will help to boost China's population -- the country is currently dealing with its lowest birth rate in six decades. The team, from Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology in China's eastern Jiangsu province, designed the robot to constantly monitor and care for human embryos by adjusting the nutrition, carbon dioxide, and other important factors in the artificial embryos. They claim the new robot-assisted artificial womb is a safer and more efficient method for growing embryos than a natural womb, though no human trials have been conducted so far. The researchers, who outlined their project in a paper in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering, explained how it could rank embryos based on their development potential.

Scientists in China have created a robotic artificial intelligence system to monitor and care for human embryos growing in artificial wombs. The AI robot is being developed as a potential solution to population growth problems in the world's most populous country, with birth rates recently falling to their lowest level in six decades. Researchers at the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology in China's eastern Jiangsu province developed the robot to undertake the labour-intensive task of observing, documenting and manually adjusting the carbon dioxide, nutrition and other environmental inputs. It is also able to rank embryos by their development potential, according to the South China Morning Post, who first reported on the device. A research paper published in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering described how the robotic nanny has already been used to nurture animal embryos within an artificial womb environment.

Technology won’t be a problem for its future application, but legal and ethical concerns might, warns Beijing-based researcher.

I am still half asleep, had a nice dream, and huddled in my warm bunk bed. The other children are outside. It feels good to be with my brothers and sisters, pretty sure my brothers are playing soccer again. Sunrise is already peering through the skylight. How could children in the old times wake without their brothers and sisters?

As far-fetched as it may seem today, there are a couple of compelling reasons why some humans may one day be born without either a mother or father as we now know them, and with no other humans around to bring them up. The first is the uninhabitable Earth scenario: doomsday. This is the idea that one day our planet will not be able to support human life. This may be due to catastrophic climate change brought on by a large asteroid or comet impact, a nuclear winter following a global nuclear war or a pandemic so severe that humans do not survive. Whatever the cause of our demise, if humans want to ultimately survive and one day re-emerge, it makes sense to store the building blocks of people – ovum and sperm – ready for a resurrection of the human race once our planet is habitable again. There are already gene banks around the world that have been created to store plant seeds for just this kind of eventuality.

This past week, physicians at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia announced that they'd had remarkable success with keeping lamb fetuses alive outside a womb--in a plastic bag filled with warm amniotic fluid, with the fetus' heart circulating blood through a filter to keep it oxygenated. Astonishing pictures of wee unborn laminated lambs quickly spun up the media science-fiction reference engine. Someday, that might be a human baby floating in a next-gen artificial uterus. Talking heads name-checked Gattaca and Brave New World. You could get a whiff of Blade Runner in there.

First things first: while this artificial womb is futuristic as hell, it's not meant to replace a good old-fashioned uterus. Such technology, he and many others argue, would allow for safer, more controlled pregnancies (for both fetuses and mothers) and would take the childbearing onus off of individuals biologically equipped to carry pregnancy. Potential controversies abound, of course. How do abortion laws that hinge on viability--the point at which a fetus could survive outside the womb--change when a fetus could technically survive outside the womb at any point? How do parental rights change?