An army of robots that reproduce
Independent [UK]
"It has been the dream -- and nightmare -- of science fiction writers for decades. Now a team of engineers has conjured up a robot that can reproduce itself.
The robot can self-replicate in much the same way that some living organisms are able to reproduce by cloning themselves.
Although the machine in question serves no useful purpose other than to make copies of itself, scientists believe it has set a precedent for a future in which robots will proliferate on their own.
In the long term, the scientists envisage a day when armies of self-replicating robots will be able mend themselves when broken, expand their population, explore space and even establish self-sustaining colonies on other planets." (05/12/05)
Link to full story: http://tinyurl.com/cjteu
Don't these idiots watch Stargate SG-1?
There
is a science fiction short story about this that I read when I was a kid, but for the life of me I can't remember the title or the author (obviously, my aging brain is not self-repairing). The robots were completely mechanical, and they started by cannibalizing watch parts from a jewelry store to build a kind of mechanical, segmented metal worm with wheels on the bottom. Then,
this small robot would build a larger machine, which would build a larger one, that robot would build a still larger one, and the invasion was on! Soon, they were taking over.
How all this got started, or why... I can't remember that, either. Does this story sound familiar to anyone out there? I think it was a famous sci-fi author who wrote it, Ray Bradbury or Isaac Asimov, maybe.
And then there are the Borg of "Star Trek;" whenever that big cube-shaped mother ship of theirs was hit with a photon torpedo, the damaged part would regenerate itself. If only our household appliances and our cars could do that— but then, "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!"
