From Xenobots to Anthrobots

Health Care Blog December 13, 2023
Kim Bellard

There were many things I could have written bout this week – e.g., in A.I., in quantum computing, even “transparent wood” — but when I saw some news about biological robots, I knew I had my topic.

The news comes from researchers at Tufts University and Harvard’s Wyss Institute. Their paper appeared in Advanced Science, introducing “a spheroid-shaped multicellular biological robot (biobot) platform” that they fondly dubbed “Anthrobots.” Importantly, the Anthrobots are made from human cells.

Let’s back up. In 2020, senior researcher Michael Levin, Ph.D., who holds positions at both Tufts and Harvard, worked with Josh Bongard, Ph.D. of the University of Vermont to create biological robots made from frog embryo cells, which they called Xenobots. They were pretty...

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