Robotic Self-Replication in a Structured Environment without Computer Control

Abstract

The ability to self-replicate is one of the distinctive features of living organisms. Robots capable of self-replication would have a profound impact on the field of robotics by improving lifetime and robustness. In the past our lab has built several prototypes of self-replicating robotic systems including semi-autonomous and fully-autonomous robots with microprocessor-based control, and a self-replicating electromechanical circuit composed of basic electronic elements (transistors, resistors, etc.). These previous efforts demonstrated that man-made systems with simple behaviors are capable of self-replication. Extending our previous results, in this paper, we present an autonomous self-replicating robotic system with distributed electronic components in a structured environment. Using simple discrete electronic components allows for a more uniform decomposition of each robot into simpler parts than for microprocessor-controlled systems. Ultimately, we would like to demonstrate robots that replicate from the most basic parts, and this paper represents one more step toward achieving this goal.