· The OpenWorm global project is making a ‘digital’ worm
·Their project is recreating the neurons and cells in C. elegans
·It is the simplest organism we know of but has similarities to humans
·By making a digital worm the team hope to create artificial life
·They have implanted the digital ‘mind’ of the worm into a Lego machine
·In a video it acts and behaves just like the worm would in the real world
·Next year the team will allow people to download their own digital worm
With 100 billion neurons and 37 trillion cells, the human body is simply too complex to be artificially designed by modern computers.
But in the quest to create artificial life, what if we started a lot smaller? That’s what team of scientists has done, creating a replica of the simplest form of life we know.
The worm Caenorhabditis elegans has just 300 neurons and around 1,000 cells – and now a robot has been created that mimics the actions of this simple organism.
The OpenWorm project, a global effort including researchers from the US and UK, is attempting to create the world’s first digital animal.
Earlier this year they ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the creation of a worm you
can download onto your computer.
