xenobot

Made by scraping living stem cells from frog embryos and leaving them to incubate, the resulting skin and heart cells are reshaped and made into body forms designed by a supercomputer to complete certain tasks, like walking or swimming. These millimeter-wide xenobots are powered by the pulsing heart cells and run out of energy after about 10 days. Since they are made from biological matter, their skin cells can heal naturally if damaged. The hope is that these living, programmable organisms can do such tasks as cleaning up microplastic pollution.