It's unlike most robots in that it's not made of any plastic or metal but entirely of organic cellular material.

It can move forward, turn around, sometimes spin in circles, and if you flip it on its back, it will flip itself back over.

It's a human made robot, but it's alive now.

You might be asking what exactly is a living robot?

And that would be a perfectly reasonable question, especially given the fact that it's being deemed a brand new life form that has never existed before.

But before we can actually understand what it does and what that might mean for the future, we have to understand what it actually is.

Researchers essentially wanted to figure out if they could take really live cells and make them behave in a way that the researchers wanted them too, much like a robot made of other materials do so.

They took two different types of frog cells, both skin and heart cells.

Heart cells naturally contract well skin cells don't.

So the idea was, If we can put skin cells and heart cells together in a specific way, maybe we can come out with a functional structure that can move.

And that's exactly what the researchers tried to do.

If you take a look at this video of one of their successful creations, you can see that the blue cells are non contracting skin cells, while the green and red ones are contracting heart cells.

So this particular combination of cells will give you the motion you're seeing in both the animation and the actual result below.

But it would have taken a long time to get here.

So, using computer scientists and evolutionary algorithms, a supercomputer would have made millions of iterations of these combinations of skin and muscle cells to figure out which combinations make the best movements.

And evolutionary algorithms would have worked much like natural selection, to improve upon existing models to figure out works better, ultimately ending in what would be deemed the most fit versions.

And so the researchers then use these computer made designs to make the real thing, and by that it means taking one cell at a time and sticking it to the next one and then to the next one.

It's an extremely laborers process.

Luckily, cells have the natural tendency to want to stick together, but it still meant a human technician going through a really intense process one bit at a time.

So what exactly makes them robots?

Well, once the scientists understood which combinations would make a cell move in a straight line or make this one spin in circles, they could then tell the supercomputer we actually want this type of movement or this type of action.

How do we get that the super computer calculates it and then gives them a design that will ultimately create that action?

So if Xena bonds are designed in the exact right way, they can move in the exact way we want them to.

And so we end up with cellular organisms that have been designed by humans to act in predictable manners like robots, which is what the dino bots are, really.

But the interesting or kind of freaky part is related to something called emergent behavior.

While we might understand how a single cell works when you put a group of them together, sometimes emergent behavior or properties come about so the single cell itself can't do this thing.

But when it's in a big group, it Dez and US humans.

Assuming we're all humans, here are perfect examples.

We have trillions of cells in our body, none of which have on their own consciousness or the ability to think.

But when you bring them all together in this particular combination, that is a body consciousness emerges.

What surprised the scientists about the Xena bots is that sometimes they would change their movement.

They might turn around and go back from where they came from, war, link up with another Xena and travel around.

Or if they were cut in half, they would put themselves back together.

So, truth be told, these nanobots weren't completely predictable.

But that was part of the research and the study.

If we were to put combinations of cells in certain ways and get action that we were wanting, what types of other emergent behaviours could we see?

So we could better understand the whole system and better make Xena bots in the future?

And that's what makes Xena bots so different from your traditional robot, which is made up of individual dumb parts.

Sorry, robots don't offend you that, when put together, make up an intelligent hole where, as Zito bonds are made up of individual cells that have the inherent qualities of life and in and of themselves are smart.

Cells communicate to make tissue which make organs which ultimately come together to make us.

So what does it all even mean?

Well, the long term implications are pretty massive.

I mean, you don't need to be worried about robot uprising anytime soon, and we can't even really tell these in a vase to do anything yet.

But the more we learn about them, the more potential there is.

And there's some pretty cool suggested future uses for Xena bots.

Picture this.

A swarm of Xena bonds made using your own cells that are deployed internally in your body and sent to your brain to help remove a brain tumor.

And because they're your own cells, your body won't reject them or picture cleaning up artery plaque in your body.

Using Xena bots, this generation of nanobots was used only using skin and heart cells, but the future ones could be used using photo receptors or other types of cells to help them navigate and understand their environments.

Why not build some with components from blood vessels, nervous systems or sensory cells to make a rudimentary?

I outside of the body picture something like the ocean, which is littered with our plastic pollution, in particular micro plastics.

Maybe these nanobots are used to target and break down micro plastics or collect them and clump them together so that they can be more easily removed.

And the great part is because their biological, they naturally break down.

So in this study, the Xena bots lasted between 7 to 10 days before they stopped functioning and broke down.

And while these suggested uses are definitely far down the line, they show the massive potential of these nanobots, unlike plastic and metals, which in your body as an example, would be detected as foreign objects, and it would cause a lot of problems.

So what does the future of this looked like?

Well, one of the biggest question marks right now is the ethical implications.

Once we start creating these robots that have cognitive capabilities and can sense things, and we're selecting them based off of their abilities to think and do things.

Who is going to be protecting their rights?

Do they become organisms that auto have rights in the first place?

If these are organisms that are actively participating in our world and maybe some conf eel pain because it's a benefit to their function, or maybe they can start to think, What does that mean, Where do we draw the line?

The researchers did acknowledge this as uncharted territory and the fact that we should be having these discussions in the early stages of technology like this, so that the public can understands that the government's convey make informed decisions and that we can all feel positive that we're doing something good in the world with it.

Personally, I found this research to be so fascinating, and it led me to be excited and also terrified at the same time.

You know the potential to address climate change with something legs, nanobots or health and safety of the human body and delivering drugs.

These are all amazing things, but at what cost does it come?

How do we prepare for what else these biological robots could be used for?

And how do we address the concerns that they could very well be considered living organisms made of human cells made of other animal cells that our biological you know, we've had these conversations about artificial intelligence and robots, and at what point do we deem them to have rights for themselves or tow, have feelings and those kinds of things?

This is just gonna skyrocket that problem into another level because these beings are actually made of biological cells.

So, so fascinating, so interesting.

I am really curious what everybody else thinks, because to me it's exciting and terrifying.

I think it could be both at the same time.

I don't think the robot apocalypse is anywhere near, but I do think it's something to keep in your minds, just in case.

Just in case one of these nanobots are watching this video in the future, though, I love you, and I promise I never questioned your good intent.

Hope this video was useful and interesting to you.

Had a lot of people asking to go a little more in depth about Xena Bonds because it's a huge discovery and break through, and I thought it was worthwhile to understand a little more of the intricacies of it.

Let me know if you have any other questions but comment down below.

What do you think of this technology?

Are you nervous?

I want to hear your opinions.

I'm so curious what everyone else is thinking.

Thanks again for watching.

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