Self-replicating, energy seeking robot projects. Making robots that live.

[Researcher X]

High technology robots that big companies like Sony strut out are nice, but what I want to know is not how to make a robot as intelligent and motive as a human by brute force, but how to create a simple mobile creature, which can seek out the fuel it runs on, and re-energize itself, and the materials it is made from, and replicate itself. Asimo might be smart, and maybe we'll get even smarter robots to the point of us calling them living, but as of now, we could be creating machines that follow the path of life regardless of intelligence. Making a worm that can actually do everything a worm can do would be a far bigger achievement than any current robot.

Imagine a robot made of carbon that is fueled by sugar. It has a nose "organ" in order to smell sugary substances, the brains to navigate a path, and sensors to detect interruption in light indicating obstacles. It can also detect carbon, and when it has enough energy, it can replicate its form again.

This is a problem that gets complex fast. A robot can't be made out of a single element, because motors, actuators etc have metal parts that have to be manufactured, and using sugar as a fuel requires a metabolism containing other elements. That's trying to replicate life itself, the most complex thing in existence. But then we're already trying to replicate human intelligence, something even more complex than basic life, so there should be lots of projects attempting this kind of bottom up approach: creating robots that can seek out energy, and replicate themselves. Where are they? I'm not saying "where are the robots" like some arrogant know-it-all who thinks people working in robotics can just snap their fingers and get something alive, but I'm not even seeing many projects in that direction. There doesn't seem to be people working on this.

Forget replication for a minute. That is the ridiculously complex part. Surely we at least have robots which can seek out non-human provided fuel and use it. There's a very large robot being developed right now, I forget the name, but it can capture flies which fall onto it and use them as fuel. It's very slow and big, but it's a start. Is anyone going further? Is anyone making a small robot which can detect sugars and use them as a power source?

I've been trawling robotics news sites for months, and I keep seeing new robotic human hands being created, and new visual, and learning algorithms being incorporated into robots, but not this. The fly machine was the first thing I've heard of on this front, I think ever.

 

[Navin A S]

I think, with all the technology we have, it should be possible to create a simple robot which can seek out and use sugar as a fuel. It would be a very basic thing, but it would give us an understanding of how life works and how we can use that to create more complex lifeforms.