Towards Self-Replicating Rapid Prototypers

Neil Halelamien writes "Researchers at the University of Bath are developing a rapid prototyping machine capable of making copies of itself and other products, reminiscent of the Universal Constructor proposed by von Neumann. The so-called Replicating Rapid-Prototyper (or RepRap) would produce items from raw materials and small components like microchips. If successful, this could make rapid prototyping cheap enough for regular in-home usage, especially since the project's lead, Dr. Adrian Bowyer, will be releasing his project's designs under the GNU GPL. It's previously been proposed that a similar system would be useful for space exploration and industrialization."

Comments

Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Black holes mentioned earlier, now self-replicating robots. We're screwed.

Thank goodness

[iminplaya]

This will be GPL'd. I don't know how the copyright cartels would react if a machine could make illegal copies of itself.

Tin-foil Hat Time...

[YamadaJiro]

If the good doctor were to suddenly die in the next four years, I'd start lining my baseball caps.

evolution and Self -disassembler

[goombah99]

I made a self disassembling robot, but all I can show you are the pieces....

Actually what you really want to do is to build a set of evolving self-assembling robots that get their parts by disassembling other robots. That way there is evolutionary pressure to evolve faster and faster self-assemblers.