Links

Moshe Sipper's artificial self-replication page contains a list of work about self-replication with links, references and descriptions.

JohnnyVon is simulation framework designed to permit template-based replication in two-dimensional continuous space. This site contains a Java applet that shows the replicator working, and a paper about the framework.

Matt Moses has designed a set of plastic blocks that can be put together to build a remotely controlled constructor that can construct itself. His site contains a copy of his thesis 'A Physical Prototype of a Self-Replicating Universal Constructor'.

This collection of papers about self replicating robots from the Robot and Protein Kinematics Lab at Johns Hopkins University discusses the potential that SRMs have for the development of space, and presents some self-replicating lego robots.

In 1980, a group at NASA examined the possibility of building a self replicating lunar factory.

In 2004, Freitas and Merkle published a comprehensive book about physical self-replication. Details can be found here.

Part of Saul Griffith's PhD thesis entitled Growing Machines explores mechanical template-based replication.

Researches at Cornell university have devised a physical self-replicating system built from four parts, each of which contains mechanical and computational subsystems.

The RepRap project aims to make a rapid prototyping system that can make as many of its own parts as possible (as well as a wide range of useful products) using cheap materials. If it works, a system like this would make it possible to download designs for objects and automatically make them at home with a cabinet-sized machine.