Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
be demonstrable in any machine that was claimed to be able to replicate
itself, von Neumann listed the following:
Logical universality—the ability to function as a general-
purpose computing machine;
Construction capability—the ability to manipulate infor-
mation, energy, and materials of the same sort of which
it itself is composed;
Constructional universality—the ability to manufacture
any machine which can be formed from specific kinds of
parts.
Von Neumann concluded that self-reproduction is possible if the above
capabilities are achieved. His argument was that, because the original
machine is made of manufacturable parts, and the original machine is
constructable, and the original machine is given a description of itself,
then it ought to be able to make more copies of itself using the manufac-
turable parts.
Von Neumann's research into self-reproducing automata also touched
on evolution, though he made little progress in that direction. It was only
with the advent of genetic algorithms
5
that some of the questions raised
by von Neumann could be properly investigated. For example, if one has
a robot, and it makes a robot, which then itself makes a robot, is there
any proof that the line of robots can become successively “better” in some
fashion, such as more being more efficient or being able to accomplish
more different tasks? Could these robots evolve to higher and higher
forms?
Of the five models that von Neumann proposed for studying self-
replicating automata, the kinetic machine is the best known. Von Neu-
mann envisioned a machine that lived in a “sea” of spare parts. The
machine had a program stored in its memory, a program that instructed
the machine to go through certain mechanical procedures. The machine
had an arm, or something that functioned very much like an arm, and
the machine could move around its environment. By using its “arm”
the machine could pick up and connect whichever of the spare parts it
wished. The program first instructed the machine to reach out and pick
up a part, then to go through an identification procedure in order to de-
termine whether or not the part selected was the one the machine had
5
See Chapter 6.
