Robotic Self-Replication in a Structured Environment without Computer Control

— The ability to self-replicate is one of the distinctive features of living organisms. Robots capable of self-replication would have a profound impact on the field of robotics by improving lifetime and robustness. In the past our lab has built several prototypes of self-replicating robotic systems including semi-autonomous and fully-autonomous robots with microprocessor-based control, and a self-replicating electromechanical circuit composed of basic electronic elements (transistors, resistors, etc.). These previous efforts demonstrated that man-made systems with simple behaviors are capable of self-replication. Extending our previous results, in this paper, we present an autonomous self-replicating robotic system with distributed electronic components in a structured environment. Using simple discrete electronic components allows for a more uniform decomposition of each robot into simpler parts than for microprocessor-controlled systems. Ultimately, we would like to demonstrate ro...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CIRA
• Authors: Steven Eno, Lauren Mace, Jianyi Liu, Brian Benson, Kailash Raman, Kiju Lee, Matthew Moses, Gregory S. Chirikjian
• Keywords: CIRA 2007, Robotics, Self-replicating, Self-replicating Electromechanical Circuit, Self-replicating Robotic Systems