Cornell scientists create ‘living’ machines that eat, grow, and evolve
Cornell
scientists create ‘living’ machines that eat, grow, and evolve
by TRISTAN GREENE —
The field of robotics is going through a renaissance thanks
to advances in machine learning and sensor technology. Each generation of robot
is engineered with greater mechanical complexity and smarter operating software
than the last. But what if, instead of painstakingly designing and engineering
a robot, you could just tear open a packet of primordial soup, toss it in the
microwave on high for two minutes, and then grow your own ‘lifelike’ robot?
If you’re a Cornell research team, you’d grow a bunch and make
them race.
Scientists
from Cornell University have successfully constructed DNA-based machines with
incredibly life-like capabilities. These human-engineered organic machines are
capable of locomotion, consuming resources for energy, growing and decaying,
and evolving. Eventually they die.
That sure sounds a lot like life, but Dan Luo, professor of
biological and environmental engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life
Sciences at Cornell, who worked on the research, says otherwise. He told The
Stanford Chronicle:
We are introducing a brand-new, lifelike material concept
powered by its very own artificial metabolism. We are not making something
that’s alive, but we are creating materials that are much more lifelike than
have ever been seen before.
Just how lifelike? According to the research they’re on par with
biologically complex organisms such as mold:
Here, we report a bottom-up construction of dynamic biomaterials
powered by artificial metabolism, representing a combination of irreversible
biosynthesis and dissipative assembly processes. An emergent locomotion
behavior resembling a slime mold was programmed with this material by using an
abstract design model similar to mechanical systems.
And the racing part is no joke, the paper goes on to state:
An emergent racing behavior of two locomotive bodies was
achieved by expanding the program. Other applications, including pathogen
detection and hybrid nanomaterials, illustrated further potential use of this
material. Dynamic biomaterials powered by artificial metabolism could provide a
previously unexplored route to realize “artificial” biological systems with
regenerating and self-sustaining characteristics.
Basically, the Cornell team grew their own robots using a
DNA-based bio-material, observed them metabolizing resources for energy,
watched as they decayed and grew, and then programmed them to race against each
other. We would have made them compete in a karaoke competition, but Cornell’s
application is also impressive.
As unbelievable as it sounds, the team is actually just getting
started. Lead author on the team’s paper, Shogo Hamada, told The Stanford Chronicle that “ultimately, the
system may lead to lifelike self-reproducing machines.”
This work is still in its infancy, but the implications of
organically grown, self-reproducing machines are incredible. And the debate
over whether robots can be “alive” will likely have an entire new chapter to
discuss soon.
For a deeper dive you can read the research paper here.
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