Chapter category: Nanomedicine

CHAPTER 3 Macroscale Kinematic Machine Replicators

This chapter appears in the following book:

Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines

Edited by: Robert A. Freitas, Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle
ISBN: 1-57059-690-5
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Chapter authors:
Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle

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Specific proposals and realizations of von Neumann’s kinematic replicators and related physical implementations of macroscale machine replicators or self-replicating factory systems are of the greatest interest in the context of this book. Penrose,683 quoting Kemeny,243 complained that the body of the von Neumann kinematic machine “would be a box containing a minimum of 32,000 constituent parts (likely to include rolls of tape, pencils, erasers, vacuum tubes, dials, photoelectric cells, motors, batteries, and other devices) and the ‘tail’ would comprise 150,000 [bits] of information.” Macroscale kinematic replicators will require a great deal of effort to design and to build, which may explain why so few working devices have been constructed to date,* despite popular interest. 652,653,2907 However, small devices that can assemble themselves from a few simpler parts have proven remarkably easy to build. Conventional factory automation technology continues to evolve toward increasingly flexible manufacturing systems that are collectively capable of self-replication. A fair number of specific macroscale self-replicating machine systems have been proposed in some detail, and a handful have been physically constructed and even patented. 650,651 In this Chapter we describe and review these pioneering theoretical proposals and experimental efforts.

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Additional chapters from this book:

APPENDIX B Design Notes on Some Aspects of the Merkle Freitas Molecular Assembler