Fifty Years of Research on Moshe Sipper Logic Systems Laboratory Self-Replication: An Overview Swiss Federal Institute of Technology IN-Ecublens CH-1015 Lausanne Switzerland
[email protected]fl.ch http://lslwww.epfl.ch/ Abstract The study of artificial self-replicating structures or moshes machines has been taking place now for almost half a » century. My goal in this article is to present an overview of research carried out in the domain of self-replication over the past 50 years, starting from von Neumann’s work in the late 1940s and continuing to the most recent research efforts. I Keywords shall concentrate on computational models, that is, ones that self-replication, cellular automata, self-replicating programs, self-repli- have been studied from a computer science point of view, be cating strings, self-replicating ma- it theoretical or experimental. The systems are divided into chines four major classes, according to the model on which they are based: cellular automata, computer programs, strings (or strands), or an altogether different approach. With the advent of new materials, such as synthetic molecules and nanomachines, it is quite possible that we shall see this somewhat theoretical domain of study producing practical, real-world applications. 1 Introduction In the late 1940s eminent mathematician and physicist John von Neumann had become interested in the question of whether a machine can self-replicate, that is, produce copies of itself. Von Neumann wished to investigate the logic necessary for replication— he was not interested in, nor did he have the tools for, building a working machine at the biochemical or genetic level.