Robots will increasingly become a part of daily life in the coming decades. Till now, we have mainly seen them in factories doing dangerous work or work that they can do more efficiently and effectively than humans.
But in the coming decades, we will witness what we have always seen in movies. Robots becoming an integral part of daily life. That means they will be in our homes, our offices, in playgrounds, in space, you name it.
But they will not only be in the humanoid form that we usually imagine. Sure, the humanoid form could become the more mainstream one but the different forms that robots of the future could take is limitless.
One such form is that of 'living robots' which a team of researchers recently built. They are calling these robots "xenobots" and they claim that these xenobots can move, heal themselves after being cut and even pick up objects.
Living Robots
The xenobots were built using living cells from frog embryos and were assembled as primitive beings. That sure sounds like something that only a highly advanced alien race could do!
The team states that these robots are neither robots in a traditional sense nor a new living species. They say the best way to describe them is as "novel living machines". They are quite literally, living and programmable organisms.
It might take some time for the world to process this information. If the robots really work as designed, this is a huge milestone that the team has achieved.
The researchers hope that one day these xenobots could be used to clean up microplastics in the ocean or swim around inside our body delivering drugs to the right location. Since they are biodegradable, it makes the perfect candidate for such tasks.