© 2004 Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle. All Rights Reserved.

Robert A. Freitas Jr., Ralph C. Merkle, Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines, Landes Bioscience, Georgetown, TX, 2004.

3.23 Chirikjian Group Self-Replicating Robots (2001-2003)

Chirikjian’s group in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) has progressed beyond earlier work [1281-1283] on self-reconfiguring systems (Section 3.8) and now is one of the first laboratories in the world to pursue an active experimental research program on macroscale kinematic self-replicating robots. Gregory Chirikjian and Jackrit Suthakorn, a graduate student in Chirikjian’s group, offer a simple operational definition [1284-1286] of the subject of their inquiry: “Self-replication is the process of assembling a functional robot from passive components. The robot that is assembled (the replica) is an exact copy of the robot doing the assembling.” Suthakorn, Chirikjian and his undergraduate students appear to have built and operated the world’s first mobile LEGO®-based self-replicating machines [1287].

Last updated on 1 August 2005