A design of self reproducing hardware

Abstract

This paper introduces a design method for self reproducing hardware. Self assembly or self organization is an attractive subject in a variety of research fields such as mechanics, chemistry and physics. Especially, if hardware self reproduction is realized, revolutionary changing will occur in the industrial world. Hardware self reproduction is a kind of self assembly to obtain the same kinds of hardware as the objective hardware from the simple elements automatically. It seems to us that the best case of success regarding self reproducing is the method of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), that is, semiconservative replication. We, therefore, aim at developing the design method of self reproducing hardware by imitating the semiconservative replication of DNA. Based on the aspects of the semiconservative replication of DNA, we classified the interaction of the hardware and elements into three modes, namely Assembly mode, Connection mode and Division mode. We show that we can realize self reproduction of hardware by combining these three modes. To clarify the effectiveness of the proposed method, we also show the concrete examples of the self reproducing hardware. The proposed self reproduction can be realized by controlling only the temperature and stirring in the environment.