Robotic Reproduction: Constructing Identical Robots from "Food

[rbj]

just got off the phone.

the topic was about some Mechanical Engineering prof that has made some robots that can assemble identical robots from "food" that contains cubes with components some that contain microprocessors. i called in and told them that it wasn't comparable to biological reproduction (which was the plug at the beginning of the show) unless we eat human body parts and from that construct other human beings (or whatever biological beings). if these robots ate plastic and silicon and metals and from that created copies of themselves (with working brains, however they are constructed), then it *would* be comparable.

anyway, i thought this topic (of artificial reproduction of robotic "beings") could be of interest here.

r b-j

 

[Mk]

Cool, I've seen several online articles on it, can you send us a link? Is it on npr.org or sciencefriday.com?

 

[rbj]

Cool, I've seen several online articles on it, can you send us a link? Is it on npr.org or sciencefriday.com?

it's the latter. the page is at http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2005/May/hour1_051305.html but they do not yet have archived audio for that show.

ya know, it really wasn't that big of a deal, it's just that several times i have tried to call in that show, twice before i got through the busy signals only to be put on hold for the whole show. this was the first and only time i got to ask my question. (i've had much better luck with The Connection, but that is not as widely distributed as Talk of the Nation.)

r b-j