The Bath University RepRap Project
Are you familiar with expensive rapid prototyping machinery? This professor suggests the machine make copies of itself to bring down the price. And, it’s an open source idea!
A universal constructor is a machine that can replicate itself and – in addition – make other industrial products. Such a machine would have a number of interesting characteristics, such as being subject to Darwinian evolution, increasing in number exponentially, and being extremely low-cost.
The project described in these pages is working towards creating a universal constructor by using rapid prototyping, and then giving it away free under the GNU General Public Licence.
Arthur C. Clarke wrote a book in the early 1960’s called ‘Profiles of the Future’ in which he invented or described these molecular fabrication machines and many of the ramifications of their use, including the fact that their first use would be to make a copy of themselves. I haven’t read the book since I did an 8th grade book report on it, but many of his ideas are now becoming realistic. The man was an amazingly prescent thinker.