This is being billed as a step forward towards self-replicating robots – a project at Brandeis University that brings computer simulation into the real-world:
The first step in robot evolution happens inside a computer. Manipulating designs that initially mutated using random sets of data, the computer worked on lines that would have been familiar to Darwin, choosing mutants that seemed able to move, killing off those that didn’t. As the generations evolved within the machine, the “life forms” began to acquire the basic principles of locomotion. The result, evolution in the space of days rather than eons, took the simulation to physical reality. The scientists “materialized” a collection of the robots using a rapid prototyping machine that built their bodies layer by layer. Their plastic tubing connected through ball-and-socket joints and small motors, the robots emerged in a variety of shapes, some moving through the use of “limbs,” others pushing an actuator to the floor and dragging themselves forward. Some robots used sliding components and managed to lurch sideways, like a crab.
These robots aren’t actually self-replicating, but the idea is that eventually robots could have the tools to create and build themselves, and essentially “self-evolve” by continually readjusting and reshaping themselves in order to come up with an optimum configuration.
