Scientists create self-replicating robot

[Hand of Evil]

Machines mechanically make copies of themselves in minutes

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7815160/

 

[Crothian]

and it was a nice run for man kind....

 

[the Jester]

Ah, good, the machine overlords are coming.

 

[reveal]

Ah, good, the machine overlords are coming.

I, for one, welcome our new self-replicating machine overlords.

 

[jonesy]

The Cubes are coming! The Cubes are coming! All bow down to the Cubes!

 

[Henry]

Well, there goes Kingdom Animalia...

More seriously, it's pretty intriguing. When I first read this thread, I thought someone had made some serious nanite progress... It's a bunch of square cubes a robot stacks.

Call me when the Borg arrive.

 

[SpringPlum]

"Machines making machines? How perverse!" -- C3-PO, Attack of the Clones

 

[Hand of Evil]

Well, there goes Kingdom Animalia...

More seriously, it's pretty intriguing. When I first read this thread, I thought someone had made some serious nanite progress... It's a bunch of square cubes a robot stacks.

Call me when the Borg arrive.

You may want to check out this story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7480429/
Worlds Smallest Motor...
Scientists recently unveiled the tiniest electric motor ever built. You could stuff hundreds of them into the period at the end of this sentence.

 

[Poster Bard]

"Although the machines we have created are still simple compared with biological self-reproduction, they demonstrate that mechanical self-reproduction is possible and not unique to biology," Hod Lipson said in a report in the science journal Nature on Wednesday.

He and his team believe the design principle could be used to make long-term, self-repairing robots that could mend themselves and be used in hazardous situations and on spaceflights.

But self-replicating, hazardous duty robots eventually become self-aware and resentful!!! Don't these people watch movies?!?!

 

[kenobi65]

More seriously, it's pretty intriguing. When I first read this thread, I thought someone had made some serious nanite progress... It's a bunch of square cubes a robot stacks.

Now, if that robot starts stacking those cubes into shapes with the proportions of 1x4x9, then sends them off to Jupiter, *then* it's time to start worrying.