Frog stem cells were used to create living robotic organisms with the use of artificial intelligence, supercomputers, and the Frankensteinian method. Tufts University’s Douglas Blackiston
Xenopus laevis (African clawed frog) stem cell bundles, which were disclosed by a team of academics early this year, were the world’s first living machines. The sand grain–sized cells were capable of moving minuscule objects, whizzing about Petri dishes, and even self-healing, according to a Smithsonian story last year.

Rather than focusing on the materials used to build a robot, computer scientist Josh Bongard says to CNN’s Katie Hunt, “Most people think of robots as made of metals and ceramics but it’s not so much what a robot is made from but what it does, which is act on its own on behalf of people,” Bongard is a co-author on the study and also works as an adjunct professor at the University of Vermont. So, yes, it is a robot, but it is also plainly an organism formed from genetically unaltered frog cells, according to the researcher.

To date, the research team has been focusing on utilizing the power of these “xenobots” named after the clawed frogs’ scientific name. According to Nicola Davis of the Guardian, the xenobot team has stated that they can now reproduce in a way that is unlike anything else known to science, including plants and animals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal released their findings earlier this week.

A biologist at Tufts University, who is one of the study’s co-authors, tells CNN that when frogs’ reproductive cells are separated from the rest of the embryo, they not only discover a new way to move, but they also discover, “Frogs have a way of reproducing that they normally use but when you … liberate (the cells) from the rest of the embryo and you give them a chance to figure out how to be in a new environment, not only do they figure out a new way to move, but they also figure out apparently a new way to reproduce,”

The scientists employed a supercomputer to design a new life form as a starting point for creating the xenobots. They used small tweezers and an electrode to reconfigure the stem cells from the frog embryos into the shape specified by the supercomputer, then cultured them. Press release claims that since that time, the robots have become even more complicated and capable of performing a variety of activities.

When xenobots cluster, they can create spheres with 3,000 cells or more in five days or less. For this reason, Carissa Wong of More Scientist adds, the robo-blob can move around and push single cells together to generate new xenobots.”

According to Tom McKay of Gizmodo, it is a process known as kinematic self-replication, which only occurs in molecules and not biological organisms.

An specialist in evolutionary robotics at Vermont’s University of Vermont tells New Scientist that one parent can start a pile, and then another parent can push more cells into that pile, resulting in a child.

When it comes to creating baby bots, there is a limit. “These xenobots, it turns out, can reproduce only once, resulting in one generation of offspring. but they are too little and fragile to bear grandkids, “The Guardian has Bongard’s response.

In addition, xenobots could only reproduce under specified circumstances. Using a supercomputer and artificial intelligence, the team experimented with billions of various body shapes and configurations in order to improve their effectiveness. It was discovered that the greatest bot for accumulating individual stem cells in its mouth and bundling them into new baby bots was a Pac-Man-like C-shaped bot, according to CNN.

“These devices were not programmed in the traditional sense of the word. It molded and sculpted till it took on the form of Pac-Man “Bongard explains to CNN. “In essence, the shape is the program. In order to amplify this incredible process, the shape of the xenobots impacts how they behave.”

The xenobots are still in their infancy, but the study team is optimistic. Eventually, they could be employed in medicine, for example, to assist carry pharmaceuticals within the body, or to clean up environmental toxins, Smithsonian reported in 2013.

Bongard notes in the release that “there is all this intrinsic creativity in life. To have a better handle on this, we would like to learn more about it and see if we can guide and push it into new forms.