SMART ENGINEERING

FOR A BETTER WORLD

STUDENT NAME: AAKRITI

COLLEGE NAME WITH ADDRESS: KAMMAVARI SANGHA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
14, KANAKAPURA RD, RAGHUVANAHALLI, BANGALORE CITY MUNICIPAL
CORPORATION LAYOUT, BENGALURU, KARNATAKA 560109
TITLE: SOLVING WATER POLLUTION PROBLEM USING XENOBOTS
SEMESTER: 6TH
BRANCH: COMPUTER SCIENCE
 INTRODUCTION TO TECHNOLOGY
Xenobots, named after the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), are synthetic
lifeforms that are designed by computers to perform some desired function and
built by combining together different biological tissues.

Components: Frog cells

Industry: Robotics, synthetic biology

Xenobots are the world's first AI-designed biological robots that can self-
repair and self-replicate.

Domain: Artificial intelligence and machine learning

 PROBLEM STATEMENT
As we know, we as a human can divide our basic necessities for survival into food, water, air and shelter
and if any of these units are threatened with contamination, it can lead to disbalance in human very own
foundation of life.

Due to increased industrial activity over the past few decades, the oceans and other water bodies
of the planet are being badly polluted, as waste materials from industries and factories are being
recklessly dumped into the oceans and nearby water bodies. Thus, water bodies are littered with
microplastics, which cannot be easily recycled or processed.

The problem lies with the detection and recycling of such microplastic is highly impossible as they
are fragments of any type of plastic less than 5 mm in length and such that the water
management techniques used for the treatment of water cannot be applied for its removal.
 SOLUTION
To tackle this problem one can develop xenobots , that are Tiny hybrid robots made using stem cells from
frog embryos. The feature of these newly created xenobots is that they could propel themselves, travel in a
straight line, or simply move in circles. They could only live for about 7-10 days, but interestingly, as they are
made of living cells, they can heal themselves throughout their lifespan.

Although we have a fair idea about these cells and their working, when you stack them together in big heaps,
something strange happens. This is referred to as emergent behaviour. Due to emergent behaviour,
xenobots could change their path on their own, or turn and go back to where they came from. Or they could
communicate with other xenobots and work together on a task. We can use this feature to detect microplastic
in water bodies.

We can use this emergent behaviour of xenobot and infuse them with ferro fluid after despatching them into
ocean and collecting microplastic, they can then be gathered near the plant through the use of this feature
xenobots can communicate with each other.

These collected microplastic can be treated in following stages:

The primary treatment begins with a screen to remove large floatable that could clog the pipes. later channeled to a grit
chamber to slow down water flow and permit solids such as sand and gravel to settle.

Primary effluent goes through secondary treatment aiming to remove the soluble organic matter, mainly through
biological processes
 IDEA OR APPROACH DETAILS
Describe your use cases here
• An experiment conducted shown that when vegetable oil is mixed with iron oxide powder it creates a magnetic liquid, also
known as ferrofluid. Which was when blended in microplastics from a wide range of everyday items showed that the
microplastics attached themselves to the ferrofluid, Then a magnet is used to remove the solution and leave behind only
water.

• This method was shown to be 87% effective at extracting microplastics from water, we can release xenobots into large
water bodies like ocean and infusing them with the mentioned ferrofluid as when it comes in contact with microplastic it
can attract such particles and return to a plant where magnet is implemented to convert the soluble containing microplastic
back to water.

• Another way, is for us to infuse the XENOBOTS “biological catalyst,” or enzyme, which has demonstrated an ability to 
greatly reduce the time required to break down some plastics. It’s called “PETase,” after PET plastics, and it essentially “eats” plastic.
Scientists found this enzyme in Japan by accident, but refinements to its structure have made it more effective at breaking down
plastics than any other known catalyst in nature.
•  
• Based on computer modeling, researchers believe they could remove about 31% of micro plastics from coastal areas by installing
collection booms near population centers
SHOW YOUR DEPENDENCIES

The basic ingredient of these xenobots are stem cells. Using artificial intelligence, the xenobots were
turned into c-shape (think of PacMan) robots. When put into a petri dish, the c-shaped xenobots were
able to gather hundreds of tiny stem cells inside its mouth, Creating new xenobots a few days later.

After performing its first, later in the treatment plant micro plastic can go through these stages
 CONCLUSION
The distribution and abundance of microplastics into the world are so extensive that many scientists
use them as key indicators of the recent and contemporary period defining a new historical epoch:
The Plasticene. However, the implications of microplastics are not yet thoroughly understood. There
is considerable complexity involved to understand their impact due to different physical–chemical
properties that make microplastics multifaceted stressors.

If, on the one hand, microplastics carry toxic chemicals in the ecosystem’s, while on the other hand
Xenobots while being developed through bio technology acts as small pedestal in solving such major
problem affecting human’s basic necessity and their lives.
THANK YOU