Research Request: Self-Reproducing Systems | Hacker News Reader

Research Request: Self-Reproducing Systems

12 pointsdaly5 comments

In order to colonize Mars it seems that a system that could (a) reproduce itself a few times and then (b) seek and collect needed raw materials for those systems which would repeat the cycle. The result is exponential growth. SpaceX and Axiom may get us to Mars but they can't terraform (mars-aform?) a planet with material only shipped from Earth.

I've been doing research in self-reproducing systems for a while now. In particular, I've been working with a robot and a 3D printer. This raises many thought experiments, such as how to create a servo motor. The point of the research is to highlight "interesting issues" and uncover interesting facts. For example, a Bridgeport is the only machine that can make all of its own parts (so far).

Many interesting ideas arise. For example, certain plants can extract useful elements. To quote (The PDF is behind a Springer paywall and I don't have access...)

"On an uranium-mining-influenced area, sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) were grown on a small-scaled plot. Subsamples of sunflowers were harvested 34, 66, 96, 108, 140, and 170 days after sowing. Contents of Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, Th, U, Zn, and rare earth elements (REEs, La–Lu) were determined in the sunflower shoots, as well as total and bioavailable contents of these 25 elements in the soil taken on the day of sowing and after the last harvest."

Another interesting idea is to eliminate screws and screwdrivers by using Japanese joinery techniques on 3D printed parts.

If you know of published materials on self-reproducing systems, particularly in hardware, please post a link. Creative ideas are welcome.

Interesting ideas and worth pursuing but currently my favoured approach for terraforming Mars would be by bombarding it with asteroids and comets. We can do this with technology that already exists, we just need to mass produce rockets capable of reaching the required material and fund the project somehow, maybe with a single platinum rich asteroid returned to Earth orbit. Bombarding Mars will have multiple benefits, it'll add a lot of dust, gases and heat to its atmosphere which might be enough to melt the Martian ice caps. We could use the impacts to excavate extremely deep craters, by repeatedly impacting the same location, which would have a higher atmospheric pressure due to their depth. By using very icy asteroids and comets you would also be depositing a lot of water, nitrogen and other elements which would help with the atmospheric composition.

I find this topic of great interest, as I think it's one of the most important technologies on the horizon, with applications both on Earth and on Mars.

A great place to start on this topic is with Robert Freitas' 'Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines', which covers pretty much every advancement in the field up until the date of its publication. Adrian Bowyer (inventor of the RepRap) also has a chapter in 'Biomimetics: Nature-Inspired Innovation' that is worth a read.

There has been some work done on the topic by Gregory Chirikjian's lab at Johns Hopkins: doi:10.1109/CIRA.2003.1222279

A lot has also been published on this topic by Alex Ellery at Charleton University, including an exploration of 3D printed electric motors and analog neural network control systems: doi:10.7551/ecal_a_026

You can also check out this wikibook I found on seed factories - a topic which I think will be relevant going forward: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories

Following the citations in the above papers will lead you to more labs working on the topic. I haven't looked into the topic since *2019, so I would love to hear about new developments. I would love to hear from you if you find something of interest: anlum [at] protonmail [dot] com

I have a copy of Freitas's book.

My initial work was done at IBM Research in the early 80s. One was the BOXER project which looked at creating robot assembly plans from 3D solid models. The other was the CLADES project which looked at self-replicating systems. I also did research at CMU on a human/robot system, the TIRES project, to change car tires. A lot of these ideas transfer to self-reproducing systems.

Recent developments, such as low-cost robots, 3D printing, and FPGA/SoC systems make it possible to re-consider ideas that were beyond-the-possible in the 80s.

For example, instead of signal wires to each joint it is now possible to put bluetooth and a processor at each joint. Power can be routed through the structure without free-standing wires.

Or, for example, 3D end-point location can be directly measured using a laser and linear diffraction gratings mounted on the end-effector.

A lot of these high-tech items are hard to replicate. At the moment I'm pondering a method of constructing a servo. Low-tech, low-power, printable conductive plastic with conductive materials might make a servo. Using an harmonic drive would make it possible to generate sufficient torque from such a low-power inefficient motor.

There is also work on building a ROS/Gazebo model that can drive physical servos so part of the system is simulated and parts of it are actual hardware.

Re the paper, I think you mean Sunflower (Helianthus annuus): phytoextraction capacity for heavy metals on a mining-influenced area in Thuringia, Germany (2014). It's available free on ResearchGate.

PDF download: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wolf-Tuempling/publicat...

Japanese joinery techniques are named origami, if I understand right, and exists books and researches on them.

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