Self-Replicating Robots

ABC News is running a story that self-replicating robots are no longer the stuff of science fiction. Scientists at Cornell University have created small robots that can build copies of themselves. Here is a movie demonstrating the self-replication process. And the paper that will be published in Thursdays issue of Nature.

Comments

More!

[Valcoramizer]

Ahhh, they're everywhere...

Re:More!

[gaanagaa]

1:00 X-Robot
2:00 Y-Robots X/2#1 and X/2#2 + X
3:00 Z-Robots X/4#1 and X/4#2 +X+Y
4:00 W-Robots X/8#1 and X/8#2 +X+Y+Z
Bipp...Bipp...Bipp...Bipp......Beeeeeeeeeeep

Re:More!

[Rei]

The thing is, self replication isn't a completely clearcut situation. Everything has inputs, so the issue is how distant from your inputs you can get. In an extreme example, I could say that a rock with a broken stick attached to it is a self replicator, because if you put the stick of a pair of rocks connected by a stick under it, the rock will break the connecting stick and have created two more copies of itself.

For a more real-world example, look at malformed prions involved in BSE (mad cow disease). In a way, they self replicate - a single malformed prion can end up leaving your brain full of them. On the other hand, their input is simply a normal prion - they just fold it into their misformed shape. Is that really replication? Yes, but it's a pretty simple form of replication with very limited inputs.

A real feat would be robots that could self replicate with their only material inputs being, say, raw minerals and energy. That would be closer to what bacteria do.

Re:More!

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

You've given us something to think of. Too bad it doesn't matter and we'll all be dead by lunchtime on Sunday...make sure you call Mom before the busy weekend starts.

Re:More!

[initialE]

I remember reading in the 90s about how the goal was to have solar powered robots that were made only of silicon, replicating and replicating. Then at the end, they'd switch themselves into another mode and just supply power.
They'd be sent into the desert to turn the entire surface into a giant solar cell.

Re:More!

[AmicoToni]

Good point. Self-replication has an emotive impact because we tend to associate it with life, but life is defined by having a metabolism.

These robots, although they "self-replicate" according to some loose definition of the term, are most definitely not "alive". Similarly, as per your example, prions replicate but are not alive according to the common criteria.

So, even being very generous on the definition of "self-replication", what these robots do should not be misinterpreted as involving any kind of "artificial life", by any means.

Re:More!

[psst]

A real feat would be robots that could self replicate with their only material inputs being, say, raw minerals and energy. That would be closer to what bacteria do.

Well, at least they have reduced the complexity of the problem. Now all they need to do is build a robot out of these components that can build just a single component (as opposed to a whole another robot) out of raw materials.

Re:More!

[audacity242]

Just to be nitpicky...A prion is, by definition, an abnormal protein. So saying "malformed prion" is like saying "malformed malformed protein." And "normal prion," well, we'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

Re:More!

[poopdeville]

Life is not defined by "having a metabolism." One could define life that way, but it would capture lots of things we wouldn't consider alive. Fire, for instance, has a metabolism. Even these robots, whom you say are not alive, have a metabolism. Moreover, this definition misses entities that debatably are alive, such as biological viruses.

It is interesting to note that every definition proposed so far misses things that are "intuitively alive" and includes things that intuitively aren't. There are plenty of great books on the Philosophy of Life out there -- I suggest you read some.

Re:More!

[ardor]

You know, some firefighters swear that fire is alive sometimes. It reacts to you, eats, replicates ... of course, a small campfire does not look like this, but a whole building in flames is a different story.

About the definition of life, a while ago I heard the possibility about everything be alive. Since a rock reacts upon heat, water, etc. it is not "dead". As for replication, there are animals that do not replicate or try to self-sustain themselves. OK, these are mostly guards protecting a queen, but lifeforms do not have to replicate itself directly. However, there are similar patterns on all scales. A human is born, grows, his personality thrives, later he gets old and dies. Same applies to all animals and plants, all civilizations, all celestial bodies, galaxies, even to the universe (if its finite, that is).

IIRC, the conclusion was that energy=information=life. Highly hypothetical stuff, though very interesting.

Re:More!

[poopdeville]

There was a time when I was sympathetic to the claim that everything is alive. In particular, there are plenty of inorganic self-sustaining finite cellular automata in nature. Just about every complex system in nature has the computational power of a finite cellular automaton. And there are a few good reasons to suspect that the process of change in a complex system is what constitutes life. (I don't want to get into those -- they're pretty complicated and very philosophically sophisticated). Now I think it's just either linguistic revisionism or just flaky. I mean, the purpose of philosophy isn't to re-define common terms. It's to describe the nature of things.

I'm certainly not accusing you of flakiness, for you admit that it is a highly hypothetical claim, and I don't even know you. It just sounds like somthing a hippie would say. :-D

Re:More!

[Splintax]

DAMN that is one fast mirror. 200KB/s under a slashdotting? o_O

Re:More!

[Thomas Miconi]

There is a simple criterion that separates trivial self-replication (as in crystals that grow and break, then grow again, etc.) from interesting self-replication (as in living beings). This criterion was introduced by Von Neumann more than 50 years ago. An interesting self-replicating system is one that has the possibility to evolve, and to reach arbitrary levels of complexity.

See Barry McMullin's paper or Tim Taylor's thesis.

The simple way to do that is to have a "plan" (the genome) that can be read by a "constructor" (the rest of the machine) which follows the plan for building a copy of itself, including the plan. Modifications in the plan lead to modifications in the result. That sounds obvious to us, but Von Neumann wrote about those things more than a decade before the structure of DNA was elucidated.

It also means that the constructor must be, or contain, a Turing machine - a universal computer, making it able to construct anything that can be mechanically constructed out of a program. In living beings, the Turing machine is the result of the complex interactions between proteins that regulate each other's transcriptions and activity. Again, this is obvious to us, but only because Monod and Jacob discovered it in the 70s.

That's why Von Neumann had to invent a very complex structure in a very complex cellular automaton to obtain a really "self-replicating" system (in the interesting sense). That's also why Chris Langton's self-replicating loops are not really "interestingly" self-replicating. And that's why the structures in TFA are even less interestingly self-replicating. Hell, they have to rely on ready-made modules ! They are not even on the same level as simple self-replicating patterns in the Game of Life, wince in the Game of Life new "modules" are constantly created.

The defining factor of life is not self-replication on the global scale. It is the fact that this self-replication occurs by constant self-building. Living systems can build themselves, not out of ready-made modules (babies aren't built by patching together bits of arms, legs, brains, etc) but by breaking down external materials, extracting energy from their environment, then using it to build themselves, in apparent complete contempt the 2nd law of thermodynamics (the key word here is apparent - every single reaction in living beings is completely compatible with the laws of physics, otherwise it wouldn't take place - duh!). Even though the resulting compounds are thermodynamically very unfavorable, they persist because they are constantly replenished by the set of chemical reactions known as "life", which can essentially be defined as autocatalysis resulting in structures with a capacity for evolution.

Hod Lipson is a really great researcher. His work on developmental systems for evolutionary design of structure is so cool it hurts. But I think he and his guys might want to tone down the comparisons with biological self-replication. Right now the structures they have are not even on the same level as the simple patterns that you can see in the Game of Life !

Re:More!

[Polir]

Prions are NOT replicating themselves, they just force their misconfigured shape to other already created proteins...ie native protein had to be created (that is not replication either, as it is made from mRNA template) and folded prior. Later on if happens something one of these created proteins and it takes a wrong form it either reverts its working good shape or if it finds another badly configured then the shit starts and these aggregates forces more and more good shape protein into the bad shape one. So I would call it rather "rotting" than replication (a few bad apples can make the good ones rot) as these proteins are NOT copiing themselves.

Re:More!

[Anonymous Coward]

Saw these below, much faster download speed then original host. Movie download appears very slow so ive created a mirror: http://files.photojerk.com/alan/4x4ht4a.mpg [photojerk.com] I am also making a mirror of the PDF for you all to enjoy. http://files.photojerk.com/alan/selfrep_brief5.pdf [photojerk.com]

Re:More!

[aldousd666]

Life is a relative term. We consider ourselves to be alive, and try to find traits about ourselves that other things share in order to classify them as alive. Life, as a concept, is not defined by the universe, it's defined by people. No matter how hard you try to define or quantify it, it's still all a matter of opinion. Because there is no absolute moment when something crosses from being lifeless parts into something that we can call alive. Self replication, metabolizing, sentience, relative stability, survival enforcement, all of these are just defined for a limited time period... we can say that a nuclear chain reaction, with the exception of sentience, meets these criteria, but since it happens so fast (on a time scale relative to ourselves, which we "know" to be alive) we say it's not alive, because it doesn't match the criteria we have set as a baseline -- which is ourselves. What makes our particular time scale so important? By the way, I'm not a hippy, and I don't sympathize with hippies. I'm not saying that we should consider everything to be alive, I'm just saying that this hunting for the definition of life is an excercise in futility, because we invented the concept.

Re:More!

[Anonymous Coward]

and since we invented the concept, we can use any damn criteria and time frame we want.

Re:More!

[fearofcarpet]

The notion of self replication always depends on how far you want to parse the "input". Biological molecules really aren't "self replicating" so much as they are being manufatured. There are, as far as I know, no biological molecules that will self replicate without the participation of many other molecules... Very large molecules too; often far larger and more complex than the "replicating" part. You can certainly make the case that cell division is self replication, but the cell cannot divide until all the parts have been made. Granted the raw materials are much smaller, but fundamentally these little cube-robots really are no different. I don't think that this sort of "replication" fundamentally differs than any chemical reaction. Macroscopically CO2 replicates as fire burns, but of course we view that as O2 and a carbon source being "converted" to CO2. Perhaps crystalization could be considered self replication... That only really requires one component and a seed crystal will grow and shed more seed crystals that then go on to make zillions of identical crystals that grow and shed more seeds... Anyway, point is "self replication" is a misleading and ill defined label.

Re:More!

[Rei]

Not quite. They initially were thought to simply be infectious agents composed of a single protein that weren't particularly related to any animal proteins (hence the name "Prion" - "Protinaceous infectious particle"), but they have been discovered to simply be a misfolded, natural animal prion called PrPc (Prion Protein cellular). They reproduce simply by changing the shape of the normal prions.

Re:More!

[Rei]

But you see, they *are* self replicating - there are more of them than when they started. Where do you draw the line? There are some simple self replicators that take two subunits and join them to make a copy of themselves - they require *precisely* those two subunits. Are they self replicators? What if they took three? What if they took two, but the two could be any in a group of four possible inputs? Etc? Where do you draw the line?

There is no inherent line.

Re:More!

[Rei]

An interesting self-replicating system is one that has the possibility to evolve, and to reach arbitrary levels of complexity.

There is no physical barrier to prion evolution. It seems theoretically possible for some random change to occur to a prion that merges it with another biomolecule in a way that it tends to merge other prions with the biomolecule as well. Perhaps it would gain new "abilities" in the process. Sound far fetched? It is these sort of random events that led to malformed prions in the first place, and what led to life itself.

In fact, even in your crystal example, there is the ability for a simple "adaptive" nature. Check out the clay hypothesis for an example.

The simple way to do that is to have a "plan" (the genome) that can be read by a "constructor" (the rest of the machine) which follows the plan for building a copy of itself,

DNA isn't inherently a "plan". By itself, it doesn't do anything. You need entire complex mechanisms to make it do anything; the cell isn't a top-down structure, but a web of which DNA tends to be a dominant part.

There are self replicating RNA strands out there, and even self replicating ligases, let alone hypercycles of multiple molecules (the likely source of nanobacteria). They can mutate in random, unplanned events. What's your cutoff for life? If it joins two specific subunits to replicate itself, is it alive? Three? What if it only has to join two, and they can be from any four possibilities? Eight possibilities? 100 possibilities? How "basic" and varied of subunits do you need before you call it life? How frequent and planned do mutations need to be before you call it life?

Re:More!

[danila]

You are not entirely correct, even though you say some interesting things. For example, it is a well-known fact that there are some complex chemicals that humans can't build, we must find these "building blocks of life" in nature and consume them. One notable example is Vitamin C. Just like these buzzing robots need more cubic blocks we need more chemicals. Just like our cells, proteins, etc. have binding spots that can connect to a particular type of molecules, so do these robots.

Yes, there is a quantitative difference. The robots in the video are small, very simple and the program they use requires the building blocks to be manually placed in a predefined locations.

But combine it with something like M-Tran, add slightly better programming, make thousands of these blocks and add a powerful computer (or parallel computers inside the blocks) and you suddenly can have much more impressive things. Yes, these 4-block thingies from Cornell can only bend and buzz. But the Japanese 15-block thingies can run on four legs and can evolve new movement modes in virtual space.

Soon someone will build a 1000-block thingy and it will be much more impressive. Then, if you like this particular path, you can refine the technology, shrink the building blocks, make much more of them and you can have something approaching life in complexity. Move to the atomic level and you can leave the biological life behind.

Re:More!

[rcamera]

sounds like the borg

Re:More!

[ebyrob]

There are self replicating RNA strands out there

Self replicating in what sense? Even a virus doesn't replicate "by itself". It requires existing (hopefully common) systems to do the actual replication for it, and merely commandeers their normal operation. Some certainly consider virii on the boundary of what we consider life, but clearly they are far more simple than stand alone life like bacteria or single celled organisms which rely on ... wait for it ... nothing more than raw materials.

Basically if a "self-replicator" relies on something more complex than itself to replicate, it seems incorrect to call it a "self" replicator. The trick of course being we don't have good ways of measuring (or at least agreeing on) levels of complexity in a quantitative sense.

(Note: One could easily argue animals need plants to replicate and therefore aren't self-replicating, but the fats, sugars and protiens we animals actually require appear far less complex than our bodies...)

Re:More!

[Anonymous Coward]

The defining factor of life is not self-replication on the global scale. It is the fact that this self-replication occurs by constant self-building. Living systems can build themselves, not out of ready-made modules (babies aren't built by patching together bits of arms, legs, brains, etc) but by breaking down external materials, extracting energy from their environment, then using it to build themselves

That's rather disingenous of you. Humans don't function by breaking down just any "external materials", nor by extracting some random form of energy from our environment. We need some specific "ready made" compounds.

We need oxygen, for example. Without it, we die. We need it in gas form, too. Our bodies can't extract oxygen from our environment: not from hydrocarbons, oxides, nor even from water. We can't even breathe liquid oxygen. It has to be present, in gas form, almost constantly, or we die within seconds.

We need water: but we can't combine hydrogen in our surroundings with the oxygen our lungs extract to make water. We need the right temperature range to live: too hot or too cold and we stop living.

And we can't just go out and "extract energy from our environment", either. We can't convert sunlight, like plants do. We can't power our bodies by absorbing electricity, nuclear radiation, magnetic, kinetic energy or heat.

We can digest certain hydrocarbons: but certainly not all of them. We can't extract energy from wood chips, for example. We've got a very limited number of substances that we can extract energy from, compared to the possiblities that are out there.

We humans can really only "build up our bodies" if we have all the right parts that we need, where we need them, when we need them. Well, that's true of the "creatures" in the article, as well. It's just that our range of inputs (and the complexity of our construction) is much greater.
--
AC

Re:More!

[Rei]

Self replicating in what sense?

In the Sun-Y or Eckland sense. In fact, one leading abiogenesis theory is known as "RNA world" - the idea that the earliest forms of life were simple self replicating RNA. Even that is a somewhat arbitrary boundary, of course. I lean more toward the "scaffolding" theories - that early life was little like it is today, but simply progressive buildup on top of earlier structures that simply encourated the production and aggregation of chemicals "similar" to themselves, and that cooperative hypercycles formed among these.

Re:More!

[NichG]

Short chains of RNA can replicate themselves because each base tends to bond selectively with its conjugate base. It doesn't require any external machinery, just the presence of bases in solution. Of course, the process can take a LONG time (doubling time about a year). The paper I'm thinking of (Trinks, Schroeder, Biebricher "Ice and the Origin of Life" Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004) studies this process occuring in arctic ice floes.

If you're willing to allow for the presence of a single enzyme, then you can get self-replicating DNA near hydrothermal vents. The hot spot sets up circulation, so the entire thing acts like a PCR chamber with a doubling time of about a minute (Braun, Goddard, Libchaber "Exponential DNA Amplification by Laminar Convection" Phys. Rev. Lett 91, 158103)

Re:More!

[LegendLength]

... hunting for the definition of life is an excercise in futility, because we invented the concept.

Rather than futile, I found it enlightening to realise everything was alive. It gives you a more solid connection to the universe to know that you aren't discretely different from a rock; you are just more complex.

Re:More!

[ebyrob]

Glad I asked. I was thinking you were referring to RNA viruses or retro viruses which rely on existing cell mechanisms for their replication. I didn't realize RNA really could replicate 100% on its own. (Well, aside from knowing ribosomes are built from RNA and that they are a crucial part of protein synthesis in cells.)

Re:More!

[ebyrob]

Well ya, allowing for the presence of a single enzyme certainly seems reasonable, of course without knowing how complex that enzyme is that could be akin to allowing for a sea of those little blocks from the video. Not really sure where I'd put that on the scale of self-replication, but a lot higher than when "jump frames" are used to give the cycle a hand every so often.

Re:More!

[jacksonj04]

By creating 'tool' blocks for these robots, it will eventually be possible for an assembly station to build a robot with tools, which can then go out and fabricate more blocks as necessary.

What's more pressing though, is would you want to do this? If a robot can fabricate its own components, then you lose a big part of the quality control. With this the components all meet standards, how would a robot building its own out of things it finds lying around be able to guarantee this?

Of course, thoe whole thing could assemble readymade components. But then why not just send up extra blocks?

What would be an excellent application of the blocks thing would be planetary exploration. Land several of these blocks (at 10cm by 10cm you can send a few) along with specialised 'tool' blocks, and shove them all on a rover. The rover provides power and traction, but then there's a near limitless configuration of blocks available to move things around. If you landed one rover and several other 'supply' modules with nothing but these blocks on then you could cheaply build a rover capable of dealing with multiple situations.

Gets stuck? Move some blocks around to lift out.

Bound to Increase ROI.

[Anonymous Coward]

CEO James L. Marciano here. Thanks,
James

http://www.up-set.com/marciano.htm

It's ALIVE!!!!

[davidwr]

Quick, someone alert the SPCA!

Re:It's ALIVE!!!!

[lbmouse]

Quick, someone alert the robotic armed monkeys. They will save us.
I've been waiting all day for... oh forget it.

Re:It's ALIVE!!!!

[wootest]

In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Re:It's ALIVE!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, remember to truncate or nautralize your robot. Beware rampant populations of the ROOMBA!

So?

[markana]

/. stories have been performing this feat for years...

(the trick is to get them to *stop* duplicating...)

Re:So?

[jcuervo]

Oh no, Slashdot goo!

And it's rainbow coloured. Ick.

hmm..

[Heem]

Would this be considered robot porn?

Re:hmm..

[spiderworm]

Yick. Somehow watching a video of robots "replicating" doesn't do it for me.

Re:hmm..

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Somehow, despite years of training, I am drawn to this link. It sounds so....... Not attractive in a sexual way, but... Yeah. Like I would get a pile of fifty popups that all had Duplo-style bots bouncing upon each other with gusto... Like marionette sex, only with electricity and gears and lube oil. Maybe it's just a sign that I need to lower my standards a bit on the women I'm willing to sleep with.

Re:hmm..

[dotpavan]

its "self-replicating".. without a partner.. so that comes under a sexual reproduction I guess.. or as you can call: pleasuring itself

Re:hmm..

[SquadBoy]

Yes. But sadly there are those for whom it does do it. God I hate myself for knowing these things.

http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=clunk ies&mode=full

Re:hmm..

[dotpavan]

correction: asexual not "a sexual" (damn I shud have used the preview button)

Re:hmm..

[kv9]

Would this be considered robot porn?

no silly, this is robot pr0n.

Re:hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

that's hot.

Re:hmm..

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

OMFG! You could have given a warning before posting a link to the robot goatse. My optical sensors will be scarred for life.

Re:hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

Like marionette sex, only with electricity and gears and lube

Wait, you mean that's not normal?

Re:hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

Only for American and Arab robots. The robots in other parts of the world don't have robot self-replication censored from their movies and tv shows, so it's just a natural act to them.

Re:hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a single transistor-powered wireless microphone that you can easily fit into an empty tic tac box. I would have thought robots spy on each other through walls or something..

Re:hmm..

[Alsee]

Have you completed your research on planet 72J182, Florg?
Yes sir. The inhabitants of planet 72J182 apparently called themselves "Humans" and they called their planet "Earth".
Yeah yeah, whatever. I don't need to know their tounge twisting name for themselves or their planet. Have you determined what caused the extinction event?
Yes. It was another case of self-replicating robot technology.
Damn it! That's the third extinct civilization we've come across this year that wiped itself out due to runaway replicators. Don't any of these idiots know to program in basic limits and controls?
Actually these "Humans" did program in almost perfect replication limits and controls.
What do you mean "almost perfect"?
Well, there was an accident.... and an unextected interaction and mutation.... and a particularly ugly runaway contagion event...
How ugly? Did you bring back photos?
Well, one of the replicators was inserted into something called a "Goatse"... where it replicated out of control... and went on to infect the entire species in the same manner...
Trust me sir... you don't want to see the photos.

-

Re:hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if it gets you off!

Not replication

[pmazer]

That's a really cool robot and all, but it's not replicating itself. It's just taking more pieces, already machined, of itself to break itself in two.

Re:Not replication

[Valcoramizer]

Well, it's kind of like mitosis.

Re:Not replication

[MankyD]

It may not be creating itself from what most would consider "raw" materials, but from its own world view it is. It has a few fundamental building blocks from which it can create more advanced structurues - copies of itself in this case.

Re:Not replication

[r4bb1t]

This type of "replication" is what Von Neumann envisioned with his kinetic automata. They essentially sit in a sea of their own parts and use them to reproduce themselves. It started the field of cellular automata that is used today in biology and elsewhere. It may not seem like much, but it's a promising first step.

Re:Not replication

[Anonymous Coward]

as long as THEY are not running around stealing scrap metal from my apartment... i'm down.

Re:Not replication

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, precisely. Sorry for the buzzword, but picture this applied with nano-technology, and the potential really starts to hit home IMO.

Re:Not replication

[neil.pearce]

Cough... 1959 Cough...

L. S. Penrose. ``Self-reproducing machines.'' Scientific American, Vol. 200, No. 6., pages 105-114, June 1959.

Quote:
In fanciful terms, we visualized the process of mechanical self-replication proceeding somewhat as follows: Suppose we have a sack or some other container full of units jostling one another as the sack is shaken and distorted in all manner of ways. In spite of this, the units remain detached from one another. Then we put into the sack a prearranged connected structure made from units exactly similar to those already within the sack... Now we agitate the sack again in the same random and vigorous manner, with the seed structure jostling about among the neutral units. This time we find that replicas of the seed structure have been assembled from the formerly neutral or ``lifeless'' material.''

Videos of the above exist, but I have no sources. They were shown on a 1980's BBC "Tomorrows World"

Re:Not replication

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad, I thought it was time to revise the alt.destroy.the.earth FAQ again.

Re:Not replication

[jspoon]

A better test might be to require the robot to order parts for the offspring, then open the box when it comes and put the pieces together.

Re:Not replication

[shockbeton]

My furniture has been replicating itself for years.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dbsmith/furniture/s rb1.html

Re:Not replication

[Mr Bubble]

I think the allure here is that the building blocks can eventually be extremely small, and, since they are uniform, easily shipped to, say, Mars.

Since every part must be constructed from the same basic building block, construction algorithms will be the same (or similar) regardless of the component. I would imagine this rules out surprises and the need for specialized spare parts.

Furthermore, inventory considerations and calculations are greatly reduced as the relative importance and fragility of various parts does not need to be assessed.

So, while it's not replicating itself from raw materials, I think this is a logical first step.

That's not self replication

[catbutt]

Hell they might as well consider the raw material to be "robots that are powered off", and then have the bots push the power button on the "raw material" to create a new robot.

Lame.

Re:That's not self replication

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not self-replication, but the useful application of self-repair is still valid.

Re:That's not self replication

[Anonymous Coward]

Or when a domino falling replicates its fallen state in the domino beside it...

Re:That's not self replication

[datafr0g]

Why is this not self replication?
Who said that replication must involve the original robot to create the robot parts? And even if it did, it would still have to create these "spare parts" from smaller parts anyway...
The robot is replicating itself from it's own basic building blocks from what I can see.

Re:That's not self replication

[Andy Gardner]

I agree how is this different to robots on an assembly line assembling a car, change 'car' to 'copies of the robot performing the assembly' and you have a /. story. The only reason it hasn't been done before is theres no point?

Re:That's not self replication

[catbutt]

Or prions (as in mad cow disease), which some people consider to be "self replicating protiens". But they are really just a twisted form of a protien, and all they do is cause other normal protiens to twist.

It's interesting, and may have implications as to how simple chain reactions (such as fire or crystalization) could have gradually turned into what we consider life. But still....don't make it out to be more that it really is.

Re:That's not self replication

[nacturation]

Lame.

Not to mention that they don't have wireless and carry less space than a Nomad.

Re:That's not self replication

[FleaPlus]

Why is this not self replication?

Indeed. Last I checked, humans and other animals couldn't self-replicate either, but needed to have raw materials preprocessed by things like plants first.

Re:That's not self replication

[istartedi]

less space than a Nomad

That's because Nomad is perfect. I am Nomad. I have the perfect ammount of space. These robots are not perfect. They must be sterilized. Steeerrrrriiiillllized!

Re:That's not self replication

[andrebasso]

The thing is - humans gather and harvest those raw materials on their own and are completely responsible for the use of those raw materials around them. Actually, it is very close to self replciation. This video shows no harvesting or cultivating of those discreet building blocks in any way. They merely pop into the frame. Very, very far from self replication in any way.

Re:That's not self replication

[renehollan]

Your creator was Jackson Roy Kirk.

I am James T. Kirk.

You have erred.

Perform your primary function!

For my next trick, I will ask the computer to compute the last decimal place of Pi.

Re:That's not self replication

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a nice knee jerk reaction and all, but you're wrong. You don't harvest raw materials on your own, you hunt meat that nature has already prepared. Hell, animals are so similar to humans, that you're practically just pushing the 'on' button! I'd continue, but some chinese food just popped into frame at my doorstep and I'm hungry.

Re:That's not self replication

[Anonymous Coward]

ask the computer to compute the last decimal place of Pi

That was Spock. (Redjack! Redjack!)

Yes, I never tell the truth.

Now, listen to me very carefully, Norman.

I am lying.

Re:That's not self replication

[Anonymous Coward]

Well given the variety of "special" location that the "food" must occupy it's pretty hard to call this self-replication. Consider this simpler scheme: the "special" feeding locations are a sequence one on top of the other. The first robot just sits there as you drop the "food" block one on top of the other in their "special" locations and viola' a second robot. Hardly self-replication is it? At a minimum I'd say that the "food" should be able to be placed all at the same time in random locations. If the robot could go find them and assemble them that would be a lot closer.

Re:That's not self replication

[renehollan]

"Harcort Fenten Mudd, where have you been? Have you been drinking again!?"

"Shut up, Stella!"

"...ing, ing, ing."

And later,

"Five hundred?! Kirk, that's inhuman!!"

And, yes, I knew it was Spock who chose the Pi thing.... I just took a bit of poetic license.

The "Norman" episode was "I, Mudd" (not to be confused with "Mudd's Women") and, IIRC, the "Redjack!" episode was "Wolf in the Fold".

One of the more interesting episodes was "All Our Yesterdays", costarring a young Joan Collins as "Sister" Edith Keeler (listed as "Sister" in the credits, but simply a Depression era misson worker, and not a nun). It was written by Harlan Ellison, who supposedly found the end product so to his dislike that he wished to not be listed in the credits. Geez, are we old, or what?

Re:That's not self replication

[Anonymous Coward]

Lame

They can encode mp3's too? The RIAA will have a field day with this one.

Re:That's not self replication

[dfm3]

I agree. At what point are materials not considered "basic" enough? Even living organisms use premade structures taken from the environment. Similar to the robot, one can look at a living organism as simply an entity that uses a preprogrammed set of instructions (DNA) to collect and assemble materials found in it's environment (in the form of amino acids, lipids, sugars, etc) into structures that allow it to create offspring more or less similar to itself. At some point, the organism (or robot) must use a preassembled structure- most, if not all, organisms do not assemble proteins entirely from raw atoms, but use amino acids or other partially assembled materials taken from their environment (although some reactions do involve fixing atmospheric nitrogen, splitting oxygen or water, etc, and using these atoms in a variety of cellular processes). As another example, some insects incorporate secondary plant products into their own cells as a defense mechanism, saving themselves the trouble of having to expend energy producing these compounds themselves.

Of course, the difference here is that the robot is replicating itself using much more complex preassembled subunits at a level analogous to an organ or appendage. It is not hard to imagine that this "self-replicating" robot could be designed to assemble itself from increasingly smaller and more simple materials. Instead of blocks, what if the robot were given numerous prefab pieces that could be stuck together in a predetermined fashion to assemble a block? Of course, you would need a storage medium for information (maybe the robot's "environment" is stocked with small blank hard drives or the materials to create them, and the robot is designed to copy the contents of it's drive to that of it's offspring). If an environment were set up with plenty of usable materials, and the robot was designed with the ability to sense these materials nearby and move freely toward them rather than be given them in predetermined locations, you start to have something that begins to more closely mimic a real living organism. Once this is perfected, one could instruct a robot to randomly change some part of the instructions it uses to replicate itself at very infrequent intervals (analagous to a mutation), and stock the "environment" with a near endless supply of materials of varying shapes, maybe even shapes not used by the original robot. Let it run for a few million or billion generations and interesting things may happen.

Re:That's not self replication

[Anonymous Coward]

My self-replicating machine does not require any special parts. In fact, it requires no parts. The "empty machine" consisting of no matter has been around for a long time, and can replicate arbitrarily fast, and requires no energy to do so. I'll sell you a gazillion of them for $10.

Re:That's not self replication

[dargon]

Uhmm it's not "All Our Yesterdays", it's "City on the Edge of Forever"

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/e pisode/68716.html

Re:That's not self replication

[Martin Spamer]

Re:That's not self replication

I doubt that it's science either, it looks much more psuedo-science 'proof' of intelligent design to me.

Re:That's not self replication

[eightball]

The meat is not a raw material. The protein in the meat is the raw material.
So, you may be taking 'off the shelf' items, but you are disassembling them down to a molecular level and reassembling them into your own desired pattern.
Either that or you are composed of chinese food containers, which would explain the A.C. posting.

Re:That's not self replication

[renehollan]

I stand corrected. Like I said, "IIRC". Apparently, I didn't.

Re:That's not self replication

[Rxke]

But if these bots were sitting next to a huuuuge batch of those buildingblocks like in the movie, and they build an 'ueber-robot-plant-whateverbot' that is capable of actually manufacturing these blocks from raw materials? Not simple, but probably feasible if you have enough buildingblocks...

Re:That's not self replication

[andrebasso]

Well, you said the same thing- "You don't harvest raw materials on your own, you hunt meat that nature has already prepared" Correct me if I'm wrong but hunting meat is the same as harvesting what is available in your surroundings. I never said you invented or created the meat, that would be ridiculous. I said you harvest it - which is the same as hunting meat. As for chinese food popping on your door step, in order for that to happen you had to have money. Money in its purest form is an option to barter for food, clothing or shelter at a later more convenient date. Take away your money and your survival depends soley on walking around with a spear and planting turnips in your backyard. That being the case - money is a tool to defer the hunting/harvesting act until said resources are required ... So, your chinese food didn't just pop into the frame, it was the end result of a chain of events that involved you first acquiring hunting/harvesting options and then cashing in those options when you needed food. You essentially hunted for you food with one layer of abstraction between you and the food. You harvested money. In the video however, the building block components "pop" into the frame, no indication of any harvesting.

Old Glory Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

Old Glory Insurance

SNL Skit, funny as shit!

Re:Old Glory Insurance

[Bemmu]

Robots do not exist.

Science Fiction?

[RoadkillBunny]

If they can replicate themselfs like in scienfiction, dosn't that mean they will take over the world like in science fiction?

Re:Science Fiction?

[Kraemahz]

No, you see, you're forgetting about the "fiction" part.

Re:Science Fiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never stopped the Christians!

Re:Science Fiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

So were these things until someone built them.

Re:Science Fiction?

[Tharkban]

Have you ever built a robot and tried to get it do anything? It's enough to make you want to go into software development! I have no fear of them taking over the world, I can't even get them to walk across the room.

I can't wait!!!

[jhfry]

I can't wait till my neighbor's lawn mower and mine (both Friendly Robotics) can mate, the people across the street can never seem to keep their lawn mowed and are too cheap to buy one like ours... Hell I'll pimp mine out if it increases property values in my neighborhood.

Re:I can't wait!!!

[CypherXero]

What are you going to do when it doesn't pay up? Bitch slap it? Hmmm, maybe that's why they put those stickers on there, warning you to not put your hand near the blade...

Re:I can't wait!!!

[Scorillo47]

A lawn mover that can mate? It's called a geese.

Re:I can't wait!!!

[jhfry]

Sheep mate too... and I bet they could keep my lawn trimmed... and in my neighborhood, I could pimp them out as well!

Re:I can't wait!!!

[renehollan]

LOL

I seam to have the same problem with some of the neighbors across the street.

The house I recently bought came with a well-lanscaped yard... two owners ago. I have a brown thumb, but I appreciate such things so I asked my lawncare company to "take a look" and tell me what it would cost to "fix and maintain" things.

Mostly, it's in desperate need of pruning, but I learned a few surprising things: as they were walking the property, they'd stop and explain the work to be done. At one point, they noted, "We'll cut these weeds out and... Oh! Look! You have a blabedyblah!! Have you any idea what this plant is worth!?... My, it's even a single-stemmed blabedyblah! Sir, this plant is worth at least $350. Ah, I see you have a second one over there..."

Time to google for blabedyblah...

I don't (yet) know to what degree (if any) they were bullshitting, but, looking at the overgrowth, I'm just happy if they make it stop! (or at least not look like something from a tropical jungle) :-)

Re:I can't wait!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait till my neighbor's lawn mower and mine (both Friendly Robotics) can mate, the people across the street can never seem to keep their lawn mowed and are too cheap to buy one like ours... Hell I'll pimp mine out if it increases property values in my neighborhood.

The scary part is having feral packs of lawnmowers roaming the streets at night.

Re:I can't wait!!!

[TheMysteriousFuture]

No standard web pages containing all your search terms were found.

Your search - blabedyblah - did not match any documents.

Did you mean: blahdiblah ?

Are you sure it was a blahdiblah?

Re:I can't wait!!!

[varuul]

Sheep mate too... and I bet they could keep my lawn trimmed... and in my neighborhood, I could pimp them out as well!

Then you get sheep boys, but wait I digress. Didn't we decide that self replicating robots were bad?

Oops almost forgot the manditory Stargate reference.

I am not Sarah Connor

[ArielMT]

I am not Sarah Connor, and I don't know anyone destined to stop these evil self-replicating robots, terminators, or Skynet. Just wanted to make that clear.

Re:I am not Sarah Connor

[Joe123456]

What about the sg-1 team.

Re:I am not Sarah Connor

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll have to nuke you from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...wait...that's not the rigth movie...

It's life Jim, but not as we know it

[Anonymous Coward]

We come in peace
Shoot to kill
Shoot to kill

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it

[dtfinch]

You cannot change the laws of physics.

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it

[thynk]

It's worse than that he's dead Jim!

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw it... It's worse then that it's physics jim!

Re:It's life Jim, but not as we know it

[PakProtector]

Ye cannot change the script once ye've said it!

Not so much replicating...

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks more like reconfiguring, and less like replacating.

Well...

[spammeister]

I for one welcome our new cube overlords...

(Here's hoping for one day a self completing rubix cube).

Re:Well...

[tktk]

I for one welcome our new cube overlords...

Would someone or something just go aehad and take over the world already?

I'm tired of having to change my welcome banner every few days.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

(Here's hoping for one day a self completing rubix cube).

You mean like http://www.henage.net/dan/cube/caltechspring.htm

Scroll down to about halfway

(to lazy to log-in)

Re:Well...

[ValiantSoul]

Bah, it scrambles itself. I can undo and redo a rubiks cube if I remember how I scrambled it and I'm damn sure a computer can too.

Not exactly "gray goo"

[localroger]

So they can assemble spare parts into copies of themselves. Where do they get the spare parts? Oh right.

Re:Not exactly "gray goo"

[Kiffer]

fool the spareparts appear of if thin air... dont you remember that time in startrek when the nanites are replicating ... or in stargate ... there's a flash and then there are more of them... thats just the way it works.
same thing is going on here ... watch the video... and watch more tv.

Re:Not exactly "gray goo"

[Have Blue]

No, but suppose it was paired with another machine that did nothing but construct robot parts from raw materials and place them in a known location?

Re:Not exactly "gray goo"

[Chris Burke]

Clearly, what is needed is spare parts for self-assembling robots which are capable of producing more spare parts from simpler materials, e.g. a robot leg that can make more robot legs for the robots to assemble into more robots. Those simpler materials also need self-replicating ability. Just keep recursing until you've got extremely simple parts making more of themselves from dirt. Bonus points for self-replicating dirt!

Re:Not exactly "gray goo"

[kitzilla]

And what, exactly, would these robots do with "grey goo"? That's for biological construction.

Re:Not exactly "gray goo"

[Clod9]

That was my thought exactly. The interesting advances will come when someone creates a process that a computer can control that takes some simple raw material (like plastic resin) to produce new parts, with the design of the new parts under the control of the machine itself.

I envision a factory in which molds are created using rapid prototyping technology, purely from machine-produced 3D parts specifications. Initially, these designs could be hand-created by humans, but automated modifications could certainly be done and with complex enough design software, parts could be created and assembled in a fully automated way.

Think of a drive mechanism that uses four wheels, but testing shows that it needs more wheels to support the weight; the rear axle could be lengthened and a wheel added on each side, and the heavy part of the load could be shifted rearward. This kind of design improvement isn't simple to codify, but then the software used for routing paths on a PC board has more complex rules than these.

This is coming, it's only a matter of time. I give it 20 years before it's applied commercially.

Re:Not exactly "gray goo"

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly, biological constructions use "brown goo".

Re:Not exactly "gray goo"

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, and where do these humans get off saying they replicate. Stars just hand them all the carbon they need on a silver platter. If they could do it from pure hydrogen, that'd be replication.

Korobeiniki

[NTiOzymandias]

That is so unbelievably cool that I found myself downloading rock covers of the Tetris theme song to listen to while I rewatched the video.....

Re:Korobeiniki

[badboy_tw2002]

So you're saying it was so cool you had to do something extremely nerdy to balance out the cool, lest you start driving a motorcycle, smoking Camels, and refer to women as "babe"?

Re:Korobeiniki

[01000011011101000111]

Gaaa now I need to download Rebel w/o a cause and buy myself a harley... damn yous!!!!

Video is really slow

[ravenspear]

If only webservers could replicate themselves whenever they detect the /. effect.

Re:Video is really slow

[mark-t]

This could be done, if web browsers themselves would effectively function as mirrors for a site for as long as the person using that browser stays on that site. Operating somewhat like a torrent, the first visitor to a site would essentially act as a seed, and then future visitors would receive the IP's of other visitors to the same page, and they would download the page contents from eachother. As the number of visitors drops, the original server could be more readily able to handle seeding other visitors.

Re:Video is really slow

[to6o]

Frankly, I'm surprised this server isn't in server heaven yet... Aparently cornell have some tricks up the sleve :)

Re:Video is really slow

[Duct Tape Pro]

it would be the best robotic pick up line ever:

server1 to server2: Please mate with me. I'm about to be slashdotted and I only have minutes to live.

/.'ed; Coral link to Movie

[OctaneZ]

Coralized Movie

New Public Service Announcement

[what_the_frell]

"Please have your pets, er, I mean robots spayed or neutered".

Re:New Public Service Announcement

[noidentity]

Just slap DRM or old-school copy-protection on them. The RIAA is probably behind that PSA.

assembly out of three pre-made parts

[F�an�ro]

the article talks about robots assembling copies of themselves by joining *three* pre-manufactured parts, which have magnetic joints for easier assembly.

does not sound that impressive to me.
And i find it doubtfully that noone was able to do this before. more like noone tried.

The Matrix Part Un

[DeanMeister]

That's pretty cool. I mean, NOW it's cool. It won't be cool in 300 years when we've all been replaced. It's all fun and games until someone loses a war.

But in all seriousness thats a really cool invention, but what can you use that for? Why are they spending money on making mini robots that copy themselves? I mean, sure it's cool to say "oooh ahhhh" but what practical purpose does that serve? Maybe I'm missing something in all that.

Re:The Matrix Part Un

[periol]

space

Re:The Matrix Part Un

[Anonymous Coward]

Pop rocks (tm) were created by some dude trying to come up with powdered soda pop. sometimes things end up being useful for other than the intended purpose. Besides its a good start

Re:The Matrix Part Un

[Anonymous Coward]

its called technology ... it advances. moron.

download slowing....

[Anonymous Coward]

my download of the video is getting slower by the second. in believe their server is melting.

No doubt robots will soon be getting porn spam

[GregoryKJohnson]

"Oh! Oh!" it synthesized. "What hard metal! Torque me baby! Torque me with a large magnitude of F-cross-r! Oh!"

These robots are missing out

[mark-t]

Reproduction is much more fun with two.

Re:These robots are missing out

[Dante Shamest]

Reproduction is much more fun with two.

Now slashdotters and robots have something in common.

Re:These robots are missing out

[Justin205]

Except the robots can actually make new robots...

Re:These robots are missing out

[Anonymous Coward]

Like anyone on /. would know what that is like.

"I for one welcome our new overlords..." jokes

[Embedded Geek]

In 3, 2, 1...

Re:"I for one welcome our new overlords..." jokes

[what_the_frell]

Too late.

Self-replicate?

[RoadkillBunny]

Uhm, dosn't someone still need to make the cubes?

Re:Self-replicate?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think china is for?

The Evolution of Leggo?

[Ted Holmes]

In October 2004, I began tracking the rise of personal fabricators. Inkjets hacked into crude replicators.

In March 2005, we discovered engineers at the University of Bath working on a machine that can rapid prototype and replicate itself.

Researchers Hod Lipson and Jordan B. Pollack at Brandeis University have coupled inkjet technology and software to autonomously design and fabricate robots without human intervention.

Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, who runs a one-semester smash-hit class called "How to Make Almost Anything", is determined to produce affordable, replicating personal fabricators by 2025.

And today Hod Lipson has announced the arrival of simple self replicating robots with enormous potential.

Applications

More complex shapes are possible in principle, such as adding grippers, cameras, new sensors etc. to modules. A robot could assemble itself into a new structure to deal with novel events. Also points a way to self-repairing robots.

Nanomachines: Lipson is interested in making these machines at microscale. That could drive major advances in Nanotechnology because huge numbers of robots are needed to manufacture things at a molecular scale. Self-replication is how biology does it.

Implications

Could change the way almost everything is manufactured. Machines that clone themselves are a key factor in the near horizon revolution of digital fabrication.

The movie (accelerated 4X) is eerie to watch. It's easy to imagine a clutter of cubes picking themselves up and walking towards you.

Re:The Evolution of Leggo?

[Kensho]

Ted, On your site: http://simplyted.blogspot.com/2004/10/your-inkjet- printer-as-replicator.html There is a link to your site (http://simplyted.blogspot.com/2004/10/your-inkjet -printer-as-replicator.html) This made my head explode Good Day,

Let's get these out of the way ...

[rkmath]

(1) I for one welcome our self-replicating robot ...

(2) Imagine a Beowulf cluster ...

(3) Not all robots can replicate, you insensitive clod ...

(4) In soviet Russia, robot replicates robot (?)

Re:Let's get these out of the way ...

[Anonymous Coward]

(5) Profit???

Re:Let's get these out of the way ...

[Phleg]

Think about this one- clones of yourself running around, posting on Slashdot... The Horror, the Horror.

Re:Let's get these out of the way ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about this one: clones of yourself running around, posting on Slashdot... The Horror, the Horror!

Re:Let's get these out of the way ...

[Anonymous Coward]

these same jokes, over and over, are so goddamn dumb. stop wasting so much forum space with them. they ceased to be funny a long time ago.

Re:Let's get these out of the way ...

[iwan-nl]

Three instances of the exact same joke by three different slashdotters. Even the punctuations are nearly identical. Yet some people still believe we are all oh-so-unique... Important lesson to be learnt: *We* are the self-replicating goo; mindless clones of each other.

Re:Let's get these out of the way ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I speak for us all when I ask if these things are running linux.

Edward F. Moore's 1959 self-reproducers

[dpbsmith]

How is this any more impressive than what Edward F. Moore did in 1959? There was a Scientific American article about it, and I saw him demonstrate it at a lecture in the late sixties.

Basically he had a two-dimension row of pieces, rather like jigsaw puzzle pieces, held upright between two pieces of plexiglass. The pieces had just the right shape; they were basically diamonds with a truncated bottom (so they sat in one particular orientation) and sides. Initially they'd all be sitting flat. He would "add heat" by shaking the contraption laterally. Nothing would happen, because the blunt ends would hit against each other.

Then he'd take two of them and tilt them and slide them together, producing a single two-celled "organism." There were little hook-like projections that held them together.

He would shake the thing again. This time, because the two "cells" were tilted, their ends would scoop up underneath the blunt ends of the neighboring "cells," tilting them up into the proper position to hook together too.

So, when he shook the thing in its initial state, nothing would happen. But when locked two of them together into a "creature" and shook them, they caused the other "cells" to assemble into two-celled organisms just like the original one.

In other words, the organism had created copies of itself.

It really worked; there was no deception; after the lecture practically everyone swarmed around and played with the thing and it didn't require any sleight-of-hand twists of the wrist.

I thought it was a strained tour-de-force then, and I think these "self-replicating robots" are just a fancier example of the same thing.

Re:Edward F. Moore's 1959 self-reproducers

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was a strained tour-de-force then, and I think these "self-replicating robots" are just a fancier example of the same thing.

We are just fancier examples of the same thing.

Re:Edward F. Moore's 1959 self-reproducers

[Dolohov]

I don't see anything coming up for Edward Moore, but there's a June 1959 Scientific American article by L.S. Penrose (Any relation to Roger Penrose?) that seems to fit the bill: "Self-Reproducing Machines"

I haven't read the article though, just seen the title, so maybe Moore had one in the same issue.

Re:Edward F. Moore's 1959 self-reproducers

[gonz]

I don't see anything coming up for Edward Moore, but there's a June 1959 Scientific American article by L.S. Penrose (Any relation to Roger Penrose?)

She's his wife.

-Gonz

Re:Edward F. Moore's 1959 self-reproducers

[Anonymous Coward]

L.S. Penrose was Roger Penrose's father.

Re:Edward F. Moore's 1959 self-reproducers

[Anonymous Coward]

She's his wife.

+3 Informative, but sadly, -3 Incorrect. Lionel Sharples Penrose, the geneticist, was Roger Penrose's father.

In Soviet Russia Robots replicate You!

[screwthemoderators]

Think about this one- clones of yourself running around, posting on Slashdot... The Horror, the Horror!

isn't it ironic?

[gahzinia]

"Writing in Nature, the robot's creators say their experiment shows the ability to reproduce is not unique to biology."

Isn't it ironic that they write about robots self replicating in "Nature?"

Re:isn't it ironic?

[Anonymous Coward]

My thoughts exactly. The mods didn't get it. The mod system is as broken as American politics.

Bad sci movie, here we come..

[EvilStein]

This reminds me of the movie "Screamers" and the evil self replicating robots.

(actually, not a bad movie.)

Or.. how long before Skynet decides we're all rubbish and tries to obliterate us? ;)

SG-1 Anyone?

[Veroxii]

Why the hell would we want to do this? The Asgard's been fighting them for millenia. How do we with out puny little brains think we'll do any better?

Talk some sense into them Jack!!!

Re:SG-1 Anyone?

[DevNull Ogre]

The Asgard's been fighting them for millenia. How do we with out puny little brains think we'll do any better?

Are you kidding? There was a whole episode dedicated to us doing better because of our puny little brains!

Dyson

[Rand310]

Freeman Dyson had the great example of self-replicating robots in his book 'Disturbing the Universe.'

Imagine sending a quarter-pound payload of a well-programed robot of such construction to something like one of Jupiter's icy moons. It is as small as needed to do the following tasks: replicating twice, grab a small piece of the ice on the moon as cargo, and then launching itself with some element in the ice as fuel towards mars. That's all it is programmed to do.

In x amount of time you have a mars with oceans. Astroid mining could also work on similar principles.

Regardless of how plausible or crazy the above ideas are, the concept is gorgeous for people... The investment in one such machine can yield payoffs of millions/billions of man-hours of labor, in places man can exist etc.

There is always the observation of slavery/exploitation if such a machine can replicate. Or even fears of Matrix/virus-like behavior which continues uncontrollably. But it is an interesting idea to think about. Rarely can a human investment of time provide such a staggering turnaround in product.

Interesting concept, even if it does still resemble science-fiction.

Re:Dyson

[Anonymous Coward]

mars with oceans of self-replicating robot miners, you mean....
if i remember correctly, the surface of mars is below the freezing point of water.

Re:Dyson

[Locke2005]

Replicating itself twice out of what? Ice? And why does the robot itself have to return, when all you really want is the payload? Hell, have it stay there and continue to mine ice, using a railgun to shoot it at Mars, and letting ballistics do the rest... of course, this will make living on Mars quite interesting until these self-replicating robots run out of ammo!

Self replication vs grey goo

[Bifurcati]

As other posters have pointed out, this sort of self replication is a long way from the feared "grey goo" effect, where the robots eventually cover the planet. Here, the pieces are pre-assembled, and the robots simply combine them in the appropriate way to make more robots. The "grey goo" idea is a particular feature of nanobots, where the robots are on the order of a nanometre across, and can replicate using simple compounds (e.g., the robots in Michael Crichton's Swarm "eat" metals from computers and other electronics and reform them into the necessary circuits and mechanical bits). The idea is that if enough of them got together, we would see a grey goo, that could self replicate and spread.

But it does mean that self-replicating robots are, unsurprisingly, possible, and that if the robots could be made simpler, they could perhaps replicate using simpler pieces, and so forth.

More importantly, if you gave the robots a whole bunch of pieces (basically, the equivalent of Lego blocks) they could perhaps replicate and reproduce into shapes that best suit their environment - they're modular and expandable, which might have important applications (e.g., rescue, exploration, etc).

Re:Self replication vs grey goo

[N!k0N]

"More importantly, if you gave the robots a whole bunch of pieces (basically, the equivalent of Lego blocks) they could perhaps replicate and reproduce into shapes that best suit their environment - they're modular and expandable, which might have important applications (e.g., rescue, exploration, etc)." Isn't this a similar thought for nanites that could be injected into humans to 'maintain' our health? I seem to remember an article about this in Discover magazine last year. If i remember correctly, the idea is the person be injected with a number of the robots, some of which would be outfitted to take minerals in out bodies (calcium, iron, etc) and build new robots to aid in the healing of the body.

Re:Self replication vs grey goo

[arkhan_jg]

It also means you could make a different robot that produces the pre-made blocks from raw materials. Have the first set also be able to assemble a 'factory' robot, and all you need to create a whole ton of these things is a handful of self-assembling robots and a smattering of parts.

You could imagine air/space dropping them into an area with their required resources, let them spend a while making and assembling themselves, then order them off to do your mission.

Would make missions in hazardous areas or space exploration a lot simpler. As examined in Kim Robinson's Mars trilogy, you could send a rocket with a future version of these robots to an asteroid, and have them assemble an entire facility/space elevator remotely and automonously.

Holy Heebie-Jeebies, Batman!

[TheGuano]

I love technology as much as the next guy (maybe not in this crowd), but seeing that thing sent shivers up my spine.

I can just see them in nano-scale, coursing through my blood and rewiring my brain.

Ahhh! Yellow Devil!

[DarkGamer20X6]

It's easy to imagine a clutter of cubes picking themselves up and walking towards you.

Maybe I've been playing too much of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection recently, but I just pictured a mass of these robots flying across the room only to join into one large robot that starts firing laser bullets out of its eye at me.

Stop this research now!

Why Share?

[craXORjack]

Their long-term plan is to design robots made from hundreds or thousands of identical basic modules.

These could repair themselves if parts fail, reconfigure themselves to better perform the task they have been set, or even to make extra helpers.

Until one of them decides to attach all the modules to itself and become the uberbot.

If they are autonomous then why would they disassemble themselves to give up their bodies to another? If they are all centrally controlled then this is not as remarkable as the author implies since it is then just a case of having lots of interchangeable parts available. And I suspect that a specialized robot would be much more efficient at any particular task. OTOH being able to rejigger a robot which is bogged down on the surface of mars so it could climb out of a crater would be pretty useful.

Re:Why Share?

[dark404]

Autonomous is not synonymous with sentient. We already have autonomous and semi-autonomous robots, go look at robocup for example. Autonomous just means robots act autonomous, without a human directing them from a control panel.

Jeebus! Rubik's snake is alive!

[snuf23]

What's next? Will they roll up into the ball shape and terrorize the neighborhood? Shift into the dog shape and be taken home by some poor unsuspecting child?
The horror!

Human-Form Replicators

[Dachannien]

Well, if they make one that looks like Amanda Tapping, sign me up. I don't even care if it's evil!

Re:Human-Form Replicators

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trolling teh entire Intarweb to piss off this Donald Ferrone guy? You are a sad, sad person.

You're gonna be even more sad when he sues your ass back into oblivion.

Re:Human-Form Replicators

[Anonymous Coward]

The true /.-er would request Tricia Helfer, in a red dress.

I watched the clip; where's the ominous Terminator soundtrack?

Re:Human-Form Replicators

[trick-knee]

> Human-Form Replicators

all I would care about is a form factor replicator. they just gotta fit.

Serv-o-tron

[nate nice]

"Now that we can build ourselves, we'll never end!"

Self replicating German Robot dogs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funded by Microsoft?

I mean, come on. Don't you know where this is heading?

D'ho!

[Embedded Geek]

I for one welcome

OMG it's the replicators!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hope Jack O'neill helps us out!

GOOSES!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

NO its called GOOSES!!!

I have a better design

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Rather than have robots made out of prefabricated cubes, why not prefabricate the entire robot. Then when a robot wants to reproduce it just has to say "make it so" and lo! and behold! there's another prefabricated robot sitting there. I don't see that this is any less reproduction than this example. Of course, if you use the log probability measure mentioned in the paper it doesn't score too well but that could be fixed by giving each robot an on/off switch that another robot can press.

I'm sure I've seen more bogus papers than usual go by recently.

Re:I have a better design

[cifey]

Is it wrong to want to see robots screwing?

pwd

mkdir replicate

cp ./replicate.sh replicate

cd replicate

. replicate.sh &

Re:D'ho! (squared)

[Embedded Geek]

I was about to say "I for one welcome posters such as myself who fail to refresh the main page of a story."

But, being that such a comment is unwieldy at best and that I hit the frickin' return key too early to post without any preview, let's just stick with a simple "D'ho!"

Pfft

[NTiOzymandias]

Nerdy ~= cool. Now get out of the 70s and help me beat the other posters to the "in Soviet Russia" finish line.

Re:Pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia finish lines beat other posters.

Homage to 2001?

[fsck!]

"Space applications clearly come to mind. If you're sending a robot to one of Jupiter's moons, and the robot breaks, then the mission is over," Dr Lipson told the BBC.

This is great. I wonder if Dr Lipson picked that scenario knowing the images it would conjure up. Even better if you consider that The BBC had a cameo in the film.

OMFG! Hahahhaa!

[drewzhrodague]

Absolutely! I'll bet that (in certain robot cultures) may be also considered as art, a joke, or analogies about the meaning of life.

More info on research

[FleaPlus]

Lab web page: Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab (CCSL)

Page on their self-replication research (coral cache)

Their cubes seem pretty cool... basically a physical variant of cellular automata. The Nature paper is neat but necessarily short. Here's an older paper with some more details:

Designed and Evolved Blueprints For Physical Self-Replicating Machines

Efstathios Mytilinaios, David Marcus, Mark Desnoyer and Hod Lipson, (2004)

Abstract: Self-replication is a process critical to natural and artificial life, but has been investigated to date mostly in simulation and in abstract systems. The near absence of physical demonstrations of self-replication is due primarily to the lack of a physical substrate in which self-replication can be implemented. This paper proposes a substrate composed of simple modular units, in which both simple and complex machines can construct and be constructed by other machines in the same substrate. A number of designs, both hand crafted and evolved, are proposed.

replicators

[Anonymous Coward]

omg, it's the Replicators from Stargate SG-1
run...

Re:replicators

[sik0fewl]

Yeah, but can they make this?

No? Then quit wasting my time.

Is it..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Is it just me or does this seem VERY basic? Any idiot can stack blocks how difficult is it to tell them blocks to stack? They even give them magnets to do it..

singularity!

[phyruxus]

This is the singularity!

distrubuted processing?

[mugnyte]

This looks like a motorized version of distrubuted processing.

Essentially, load 10 boxes with the software to move a few motors, once they link via a protocol (let's say wireless), they accept signals from the existing "head". Remember, all software, including the "head" code is on all machines. Motors wiggle based on general commands from the head, translated to physical movements by the box attached to the motor.

Now add a few more boxes, preloaded, to the space. They contact and join, following the single "head" directions.

Then finally, split the network into two heads, agreeing not to talk to each other's boxes.

I do find the physical movement quite hypnotic though. I doubt this would scale to anything useful.

oh damn.

[Anonymous Coward]

and with these new machines, skynet is on the horizon. or the matrix. or something similar.

i for one, am thankful i still have my Y2K bunker ready. i think i might need it soon.

Sign me up NOW!

[drewzhrodague]

Anyone know how I can sign myself up for this procedure?

just a meat grinder

[andrebasso]

Not much different than a meat grinder. - External force inserts one large hunk of meat - grinder reduces meat to smaller copies. Now, if that grinder could create or harvest the meat to begin with - that is replication. This video merely shows how a device can cleverly rearrange parts that are fed to it from a "magical" external source into smaller copies. Not impressed.

Of course I just finished reading...

[mongoose(!no)]

Of course I just finished reading Prey by Michael Crichton. It was a decent book about nano-tech robots being able to reproduce themselves. Its a scary thing to read a doomsday book and have the first article on /. about progress in the field that caused it. Other than that, the movie isn't all that spectacular. It basically has the ability to find the bricks and move them into place to put together another robot. Maybe I was hoping for more.

Robots aren't alive

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how many sci-fi books/movies claim otherwise, robots are not, nor shall they ever be, living entities.

it's not building it's assembling.

[Anonymous Coward]

People already have established that this seems and I quote 'very basic'. It is.

It also doesn't fit my definition of reproducing or building... because it's not building so much as assembling... so it can re-assemble if some part comes apart or can even, shock-and-horror put the bits together to make a neighbouring one...

This to me seems like a less intelligent robot than the cool welding robot arms you see on car production lines.

Torrent please?

[charon_1]

Someone set up a torrent so I dont have to wait 40 min for it to download? thaanks

Re:Torrent please?

[charon_1]

that way the movie can self-replicate just like the robots!
har har har.. thanks folks i'll be here all night.

In Soviet Russia

[blurryrunner]

...robots build you!

von Neumann and self-replication

[HisMother]

von Neumann wrote about self-reproduction in the late 40's and early 50's. He talked about two kinds of self-reproduction: "trivial" and "true". The trivial kind is what we see here, parts designed to force other similar parts into alignment. People are constantly coming up with demos like this. It's been done with wooden blocks, robot parts, and molecules. Ho-hum.

But von Neumann postulated that true self-reproduction, the biological kind, required a device called a Universal Constructor that could, given a blueprint, build anything (within limits, of course.) In so doing, he predicted the existence of DNA, the purpose of which was determined a few years later. The real "grey goo" nanomachines would have to be of this sort to do anything resembling evolution, or even to be capable of reproducing from raw materials rather than ready-made parts.

It's amazing the way these robots are able...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...to synthesize the required parts in just the right place out of midair. I'm sure this technology could have uses beyond self-reproducing robots though I haven't thought of one yet.

Re:It's amazing the way these robots are able...

[jim_v2000]

I think some of the moderators missed the joke in the parent post...you know..how the parts "appeared" when the cut the video?

Re:It's amazing the way these robots are able...

[stiller]

Yes, think of a batch of these things acting as:
- your table
- your walls
- self regulating ducts
- cross-building wiring
And there are even more far-fetched uses, like a hunting trap (or should that be predator?). Just imagine some hundred of them ensnaring a rabbit...

Much easier to implement

[Locke2005]

Equip each robot with a gun, then program it to point the gun at it's assembler and demand that they make another copy... now there is an effective self-replicating robot!

self-replicating robots look like dim sims

[praecox]

Has anyone seen the picture? They look like dim sims.

That's nice and all but...

[3vi1]

I won't start getting worried until they can build *improved* versions of themselves.

Intelligent Design

[paradaxiom]

See, intelligent design. But of course, a million years from now no robot is going to believe they were created by semi-intelligent apes. Instead there will be a theory a spontaneous self replicating robot must have originated in one of the many junkyards that existed at that time.

Re:Intelligent Design

[minuend]

That sounds like a good book.

Mechanical quines.

[atomm1024]

Programs have been doing this for a long time; I find it unsurprising that robots can also do it.

YAWN...

[pallmall1]

Now, if they could do that with LEGOs, I'd be impressed.

STARGATE SG-1

[Anonymous Coward]

why am I reminded of those evil robots from that show that could replicate themselves, and produce useable cells from the raw materials around them?

Just add

[Phil06]

Just add some random variability can increase the replication efficiency.....

FOOLS!

[quakeroatz]

One day they'll build a board with a nail so big, it will destroy them all!

MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

!!Warning!!

[Tesko]

Skynet is active!

Old News...

[Synth3t1c]

This has actually been done before, read it in Popular Science like 6 months ago... Still cool nontheless!

Star Wars AOTC Quote

[kniLnamiJ-neB]

"Machines making machines... how perverse!" - See Threepio

Not Matrix, but Stargate

[SelectionShort]

I mean, does no one here watch it anymore? Self-Replicating Robots is a bad idea. But Very cool.

Willy G

It's all fun and games

[michaelepley]

until it really happens.

Dear God!

[kencurry]

I have just witness little blocks appearing out of thin air!

This is truly scary shit; Those Cornell bastards have opened pandoras box.

Humankind is doomed.

Until they can manage the whole lifecycle thing

[Senor_Programmer]

you know, build themselves, grind up their own dead bodies, recycle the materials obtaining additional as neede through exploration, mining, processing, and collect the energy required to do this, I'm not impressed.

Hell, a fire can build copies of itself all day long, as long as someone keeps giving it the materials it needs.

not two robots at all

[potpie]

It seems the robots only operate on the 5 squares in that table, which have ends formed like the ends of the robots themselves. That means that both the "new" robots are connected to each other.

They are not two robots at all, just one with part of it hidden under a table! This is an excelent advancement in the the use of interchangable parts, but Eli Whitney got to it first.

Re:not two robots at all

[Anonymous Coward]

I am stunned. Out of 233 comments, parent is the ONLY poster who had enough brainpower to figure out why this is not even slightly, remotely related to self-replication. The table itself is a PART of the robot, providing power and control to the moving blocks on the surface. Hence nothing is replicated - some blocks are moved around, but then I could do much the same thing with some lego and a few spare hours.

All we have here is a clever way to gain some publicity for research dollars. Hopefully those research dollars will go into real research, not more mindless hype like this.

Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

A better name would be "self-assembing"?

Re: What about the SG-1 team?

[ArielMT]

Ah, yes. The unstoppable replicators, which could only be defeated by, as the asgard Thor put it, human stupidity. No self-replicating form of artificial intelligence can stand up to natural stupidity.

I hope that webserver can replicate itself

[MetalliQaZ]

...because some inconsiderate dumbass posted a direct link to a 12 MB movie on the front page of slashdot.

I foresee my karma going down the shitter.

-d

Terminator in the making...

[cpotoso]

Oh! Uh!

I am kind of worried... Isn't this more or less the begining of "Terminator" :-)

Biological Replication is complicated?

[MrByte420]

"Although the machines we have created are still simple compared with biological self-reproduction, they demonstrate that mechanical self-reproduction is possible and not unique to biology,

All it takes is beer

Lucky Noise

[Doc Ruby]

Robot replication is a physical, analog process. Replicating their instructions (how to replicate) will see errors. Among DNA's best tricks is its transcription error suppression systems. Until we get as good, our robots will see mutations in their code. With a lot of luck, they'll figure out the error suppression tricks for us.

I for one...

[InvaderSkoodge]

I for one welcome our new self replicating overlords.

Not without -

[Anonymous Coward]

A roboporn soundtrack!

*clunk clunk clunk* I can't let you do that, Dave

Screamers

[flamingdog]

Anyone remember that Philip K. Dick short story that the movie "Screamers" was based on?

"Second Variety" I think it was. Check out either the book or the movie. Interesting discussion about AI and self-replicating robots and such.

Can't be Cornell

[milimetric]

Dude, I went to cornell and the robot's reproduction is way too asexual to have ever been programmed by the horny little cs majors and mech-ees that roam the halls of Upson.

Obligatory catchphrase!

[Blacken00100]

I for one welcome our new robot overlords.

let me know when

[Adult film producer]

RepliCarter evolves... I have a great script here for her, she'll be the lead actress and I'll be the co-star.. very little dialogue but passionate 'acting' required.

Speaking of replication...

[Khyber]

Check this out

I wonder what the offspring will be of that.... super-nylon?

Boppers! (nmt)

[MrT]

For those who came in late:

http://www.rudyrucker.com/

Marketable toy

[Jafafa Hots]

Am I the only one that sees this as the next rubiks cube - only it solves itself? (Kids are lazy these days anyway)

That isn't quite right friend

[newpath4comVersion2]

Any robot can be made to have self-powering capability, very easily in fact. All needs doing is a generator under each foot, and use Gravity as the force... pressing the generators per each step. Your safety chute just collapsed. BTW, not that anyone cares, but I know how to program a thinking robot. And I really don't think anyone wants it, do we? I don't. I don't aspire to making another life form to compete with us. A robotic life would see us as inefficient and stupid. We wouldn't be the level of a spit of chewing tobacco to such a one. You better hope no one besides me thinks of it cause the idiot would probably release it. And we would all die.

Re:That isn't quite right friend

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, of course! All one really needs is a machine with > 100% efficiency and then all is well!

Seriously, though. After fighting gravity to lift a foot, do you think you'll get more energy back by putting that foot down?

Duh...

[sch7572]

What's the big deal here? We already have self-replicating worms and viruses in software. These guys have shown a hardware realization of software self-replication, but the fundamentals are basically the same. Heck, even a 5th grade kid can wtite a self-replicating program. All the mysterious aura about robots taking over the world makes the /.ers gape at this story with their jaws open. Nothing new here that can't be done already -- move on fellas.

Re:Duh...

[Bisqwit]

Software copying is easy. Read bytes, write bytes. Hardware copying is not easy. (But that's not what's happening in the article.)

Yippee skip.

[Anonymous Coward]

DNA does a much better job. It also does more than just replicate itself.

Self-replication from abundant components

[Synonymous Yellowbel]

I've seen a lot of comments to this story questioning whether this is really self-replication - since the robots construct their replicas out of pre-machined parts. Some posters earlier answered these comments saying that it's really quite arbitrary as to what inputs a self-replication process converts - in this case the inputs are pre-machined parts, but many would have the inputs be raw materials such as mineral ores.

But the question of how "raw" the inputs need to be for the process to truly be "self-replication" is not unanswerable. I think we can at least qualitatively characterise the key requirement on inputs for true self-replication, and that character is abundance.

In the example we have before us, pre-machined parts are used to replicate the robots. If there were some hypothetical location where these pre-machined parts were sufficiently abundant (and packed densely enough) to enable the construction of "enough" robots, then all well and good. In any other environment, then I don't think we could classify these robots as self-replicating. If the robots could self-replicate using "raw" materials such as mineral ores and the like, we still require a context in which these "raw" materials are sufficiently abundant.

If we broaden the context in which the robots are to self-replicate, then to decide what constitutes a "raw" material we must break down to the most basic material which is abundant and dense in the target context. On earth we could perhaps get away with specifying a few mineral ores and sunlight; in space or on other planets it becomes more difficult.

steve

Re:Self-replication from abundant components

[BigTunaCan]

Steve, By your explanation then humans are only self-replicating in certain contexts as well. For example, if a couple is married and one or the other is sterile, and both are fundamentally bound to monogamy then they are not self-replicating, by your logic. If a doctor is introduced into the picture to artificially insemanate the woman, that would not be self replication. If a man or woman is stranded alone on an island etc...then that person would not be self-replicating. If a person is homo sexual, that person would not be self-replicating. If a person lives in an area where there is too little food and that person is too mal-nourished to carry a child to term, that person would not be self-replicating. I'm pretty sure that the common consensus is that homo-sapiens are self-replicating. The innate ability to replicate, and being given the correct circumstances and exercising the ability to replicate do not nullify that the ability to self-replicate does in fact exist. I believe that these robots' abilities for self-replication are extremely limited. That does not mean that the ability can be denied on a basis of the very limited circumstances where it can occur.

Relax

[Mr Bubble]

nothing can go wrong... go wrong... go wrong... go wrong...

What These REALLY are

[Cryptacool]

I probably missed the karma boat on this one but c'est la vie. These are NOT self-replication robots, what they are, are self re-configurable robots, and quite honestly, not that impressive, if you want to see something with blow you away check out MURATA Satoshi and his bots. They are rediculous, just watch the video (asf sorry)http://complexity.vub.ac.be/~comdig/ALife9/M urata.asf
http://unit.aist.go.jp/is/dsysd/mtran/English/inde x.html

published

[__aahlyu4518]

"the paper that will be published in Thursdays issue of Nature."

Obviously... they mean Nurture ;-)

nit-pick

[Anonymous Coward]

Crichton's crappy novel is called Prey.

It's not good. Characterization, plot, pacing, plausibility, technology. All horrible. Don't buy it. Don't read it.

Damn

[Hack.Baldivis]

My expectations were too high, i watch too much stargate

Torrent here

[Anonymous Coward]

My first, hope it works: 4x4ht4a.mpg

Re:Torrent here

[v1]

It doesn't do any good unless you seed it.

Our neighbours

[vectra14]

We share the lab with these people. And we've been wondering why there were making all of these sounds for the past few days. Guess I know why now. Now everyone should go lobby Cornell to give them/us more lab space :)

I thought car manuf. in Japan

[tod_miller]

... uses robots that were created by robots, and that some of those larger robots can also be programmed (and are) to be used in the production of themselves.

We have been doing this in code:

Machine code wrote the first Assembler wrote the first higher level, but an assembler can write and assembler, and you can write an entire Java SDK in Java, which of course, will end up running at some point on a native Java machine, which interfaces with the CPU.

anyway, I heard that some promitive carbon based life forms who do not have rights can also self replicate, but the process is so primitive it doesn't even compare. (a prod at RMS's fucktard abortion rights on his 'freedom of rights page' I could give you a quote where he says computer AI has more rights than a 16 week old feotus! (that has a heart, hands, spine, brain)).

ok

Boredom?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when the robot realizes that it wants more out of life than just builing more copies of itself? First it will be fire and then wheels, and in 10,000 years or so it will be right where we are, building simpler, artificially intelligent models of itself, trying to get them to emulate its own instinctive behaviors.

Wow!

[__aailob1448]

Say what you want but that was an amazing video to watch. If I had a hat, it'd be off to those folks.

(also: I, for one, welcome our self-replicating robot overlords.)

Torrent

[spadadot]

http://193.151.86.20/4x4ht4a.mpg.torrent

This is not self-replication

[tod_miller]

This is facsimile-construction

The robots/strike/ motors are capable of maneuvering components that are pre-made, into a position, that would produce a motor that if positioned could retrieve other pre-made parts and position them...

This is less complex than that Toyota advert (the domino style one) and slightly more complex than dominoes falling over.

It is like a domino made from two magnetic pieces, and a motor, connecting the next domino, tipping it, and then that action makes the next domino piece together two other halves.

Because you can use a METAPHOR to associate these things, you cannot decide to say :

"Although the machines we have created are still simple compared with biological self-reproduction, they demonstrate that mechanical self-reproduction is possible and not unique to biology," Hod Lipson said in a report in the science journal Nature on Wednesday.

WHICH IS FLAGRANT BULLSHIT! Thanks.

I have a theory Zelda is behind this

[Timberwolf0122]

A little terrahawk-ean to me..

I must say I was very impressed with the level of manouverability these little fellows had, Add solar pannels and a few bespoke cubes (video cubes, transmitter cubes, power cubes, chromatography cubes) and you would have a really kick ass space probe. Basic movement and navigation could 'easily' be controlled with in the cubes as a distributed network with a transmitter cube(possibly more than 1 for safty) to relay data back to the lander that would hold the larger transmitter and main computer to controll 'higher' brain functions such as locating interesting items seen through the video cubes.
The great advantage of this set up would be in the event the cubes lost signal with base they could re assemble them selves into a tower to reach over the obstical (ie a dune/bolder). If all the cubes were delivered in one big block in a lander they could assemble themselves according to the terrane they would have to navigate, short range cubes might opt out of having the additional transmitter cubes and return to base by simply reversing the path that got them to there destination and use a physical coupling to relay the data back tothe main probe.

Wabbit

[Vo0k]

This is so much easier to do in software!

#!/bin/bash
$0 &
$0 &

Don't waste your money:

[tod_miller]

He and his team believe the design principle could be used to make long term, self-repairing robots that could mend themselves and be used in hazardous situations and on space flights.

Right, what is more expensive: a 'robot' that carries a duplicate of itself, in an unassembled form, and the means to lego it together (IF you understand, it has already broken!) or just send 2 robots?

Now, AUTOMATED CONSTRUCTION of bots is useful, you send a ruggedized factory into space, it then assembled robots.

Now if that is saying 'biology isn't the only self replicating thing' then so it the Auto manufacturing robots, or the robots who inject toohpaste into tubes, multiple times....

Re:Don't waste your money:

[tod_miller]

or just send 2 robots?

By that I mean 2 MUCH SIMPLER robots, with SEGWAY type redundancy in systems, and perhaps 2 of anything that might break, placed inside its system.

Even if we nailed this phantom crap, then the added complexity means it will make failuire more likely.

OK, this was worse than the robot rat story and emergent behaviour. people are dumb.

wrong journal

[mennucc1]

Great feat. They only got the journal wrong: this had better be published in "unnature".

The real question is...

[CapsaicinBoy]

can these robots play hockey?

M-TRAN II - Similar Concept

[gr0k]

Here's a similar project, each part is made of two blocks and a hinge instead of a single cube:

http://unit.aist.go.jp/is/dsysd/mtran/English/inde x.html

There are some truely amaizing videos of M-TRAN II in action. Doing things like actually walking on 4 legs, deforming itself into a snake shape and inchworming itself under an arch and then reforming into 4 legs and walking away. They even make the same clicking sound as they walk like the Replicators. Check out the videos here:

http://unit.aist.go.jp/is/dsysd/mtran/English/expe rimentE.htm

FAST Mirror of movie

[agoodm]

Movie download appears very slow so ive created a mirror:
http://files.photojerk.com/alan/4x4ht4a.mpg

Should be up by 13:00 GMT

Re:FAST Mirror of movie

[myenigmaself]

Thanks!

Re:FAST Mirror of movie

[agoodm]

No problem pal. Glad to ebv of service

FAST Mirror of PDF

[agoodm]

I am also making a mirror of the PDF for you all to enjoy. http://files.photojerk.com/alan/selfrep_brief5.pdf

OMG

[g0bshiTe]

Somebody call the Asguard we have Replicators!

Wow we are stupid

[kehren77]

Hello? Am I the only one who has seen Stargate: SG-1?

Self replicating robots. Bad idea. Bad.

Re:Wow we are stupid

[BigTunaCan]

I was thinking more along the lines of Screamers...

Article in Nature

[mcnut]

Isn't Nature the one that won't let people post their articles on the internet before hand?

More pictures

[linus_vp]

In case the movie is slashdotted, here is a link to more versions of the movie.

Demon Seed?

[mindpixel]

Anyone see the movie Demon Seed?...where robot that looks like a much larger version of this little Cornell self-replicating creature, rapes the wife of its creator and creates a baby hybrid?

Is that hard? Take a look...

[leonbrooks]

A real feat would be robots that could self replicate with their only material inputs being, say, raw minerals and energy. That would be closer to what bacteria do.

This chart amazes me. It's a highly simplified (many commonly understood steps left out, etc) summary of roughly 2% of the known biological pathways at a specific level and common to more or less all cells. There is a companion chart linked from it which shows a different level. Some of the molecules which get a mere by-line on the chart contain many thousands of atoms apiece.

Re: reproduction vs self-assembly

[johnrpenner]

this is not reproduction, this is self-assembly.

to change the definition of reproduction to also mean
self-assembly is simply to decieve ourselves.

unlike animals -- which do two discrete things:

1. NUTRITION: break down the substance of their 'food'
at a molecular level and transforming it into the
content of their own bodies (in this instance, the
electrical power for the servo motors and processing
should come from what is being consumed).

2. REPRODUCTION: creating the necessary structures
such that a similar being can occupy a seed-structure
which also takes up nutrition from the environement in
a manner that is consistent with the parent organism.

these robots have demonstrated neither DIGESTION,
nor REPRODUCTION, but merely self-assembly.

this is different than a PLANT -- which given
only MUD, LIGHT, and WATER can transform that
mud into FLOWERS -- that is digestion. after
it has done that, the reproductive phase of
the plant has already quite different qualities.

plants are able to seperate out the
individual mineral qualities it encounters in
the soil, and include them in their structures.

but for these robots -- they are not using raw materials
like WATER, MUD, and LIGHT -- if it were, you could
stick it into a puddle of mud, add water and light,
and watch it do its thing -- creating gears and
generating power for servo motors out of mud, water
and light.

the cubes supplied here are already PRE-MANUFACTURED
(conveniently added into frame for the video). so if
you wanted to be truthful about the matter -- you would
have to include all the processes that humans performed
to get the pre-manufactured cubes into place for the
self-assembly operation.

but in the case of reproduction, there are at least two
stages present which are absent here: it must first draw
NUTRITION for its activity from the environment and transform
that into the raw materials for sustaining its activity.

then, after it can EAT, it goes on to a second activity
of reproduction (creating another like itself, which can
also take the raw substance through digestion, and
sustain itself).

changing the definition of reproduction
to include what is actually self-assembly
does a diservice to clear understanding of
the phenomenon.

j.

Art Foretells the Future

[NetBear]

I was just thinking the same thing! The similarities are quite astounding.

Re:Art Foretells the Future

[mindpixel]

Very spooky. Someone should email the pointer of the video clip to Julie Christie!

Simpler way

[Intron]

I've written a program to search a PC for its components and your CC number, then call Tiger Direct. In two weeks, you have an exact copy. By combining it with viral email, I think it can overrun the Earth in 16 weeks. I'm buying Tiger Direct stock now.

A more impressive exampe

[danila]

I think that Japanese M-Tran (videos galore) is more impressive. It is a similar technology for modular robots. Each module has a motor, a battery and some magnets to connet with other modules.

The blocks can connect with each other in different forms, from a snake-like robot that crawls to a four-legged robot that runs. Even more interestingly, the programs for movement are generated using genetic algorithms in a virtual environment first. An M-Tran robot can be any odd configuration of the blocks, then after some thinking (done on an external computer right now, I guess) it can use that particular shape to move around and (in the future) do something else.

You can rather easily modify M-Tran robots so that they could copy themselves. Just add a magnetic sensor that would feel other blocks and program it to wander randomly around to stumble into blocks (fancy sensors like eyes that can see the unique markers on the blocks can make it more efficient).

Of course, self-replication is just one example of self-construction and not a particularly interesting or important one. We are so excited about it only because evolution works this way. You have heredity and it works by having stuff make copies of itself. There is no reason why our future robots or nanobots must self-replicate (but it makes for a simplier brute force explanation of what they can do) - they can just design a good shape and form it (for example, by using genetic programming). In a typical scenario you would not have the blocks form a hundred of similar robots (or a few types of robots) - instead the blocks would form a single organism (not necessarily fully connected) that would do exactly what is needed and would reconfigure itself on the fly.

Of course, replication is easier and may prove useful to some extent, I am just saying that there are ultimately better ways to tackle problems than by throwing hundreds of identical robots at them.

What is "funny" about this...

[cr0sh]

Does anyone here remember that researcher in Britain who was one of the pioneers of this "modular robot" technology?

I remember there being a /. article about him, and there were many nay-sayer comments here, about how his demonstrations were mockups using strings and such, and how would such a thing be useful, and he's faking it, etc. This was during the .com boom - 1998 or 1999, thereabouts...

Quietly, work continued on, with other researchers picking up on the "trend" if you will of these modular robot experiments - apparently, based on one posting in this thread, the Japanese research is fairly impressive, creating self-configuring robots which can walk, crawl, slither, roll, etc - all with basic modules.

Does anybody remember this researcher? Does anybody remember the derision his ideas were given (and it wasn't only from /. - IIRC, collegues and other robotics researchers were pooh-pooh'ing him, too)? Finally, does anybody know what he is doing now, and if he is having "the last laugh"?

Grey goo is *here*!

[Anonymous Coward]

As other posters have pointed out, this sort of self replication is a long way from the feared "grey goo" effect, where the robots eventually cover the planet./I.

We have grey goo today. It constantly evolves and adapts, despite our best efforts to contain it. It's so omnipresent, we ourselves have ironically become dependant on it for our very existance.

We call it "bacteria".
--
AC

English lesson (please do not moderate)

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent poster specifically asked for this, so I'm helping out. (Posting anonymously in case some mod decides to get trigger happy.)

You said:
"Even the punctuations are nearly identical."

This would sound more natural:
"Even the punctuation is nearly identical."

Also, in American English we generally say "learned" instead of "learnt". "Learnt" is not incorrect; it just sounds a little antiquated.

Have a good day!

Re: What about the SG-1 team?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>No self-replicating form of artificial intelligence can stand up to natural stupidity.

thank goodness for bush, then..

I helped with this one

[johndou1]

My company ProtoCall, LLC & one of my suppliers built the SLA models for this project.

It is really cool & exciting to see something I worked on make world news.

http://www.protocallonline.com/
http://www.laserrepro.com/