RepRap

The RepRap Project is an active project dealing with self replicating robots. It is attempting to prove the following hypothesis:

Rapid prototyping and direct writing technologies are sufficiently versatile to allow them to be used to make a von Neumann Universal Constructor.

A Universal Constructor, or Clanking replicator, is a machine which uses self-replication to create new generations of itself. It is speculated that the RepRap will eventually demonstrate evolution in this process as well as being able to increase in number exponentially.

Dr. Adrian Bowyer, a senior lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, is credited as the person who had the original idea.

The project itself will use rapid prototyping (specifically fused deposition modeling), and will make the results available under the GNU General Public License at no cost, allowing other investigators to work on the same idea and evolve it as well.

Project members

• Dr. Adrian Bowyer, senior lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Bath.
• Ed Sells, undergraduate in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Bath.
• Vik Olliver, Diamond Age Solutions Ltd.[1] in New Zealand

Sponsors

• The Nuffield Foundation
• Mr. Michael Ingram
• The Bath University Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre
• The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
• The Fluorocarbon Co. Ltd.

External links

• Official RepRap site.
• The RepRap Project, Reports and Documentation
• Construction of Rapid Prototyping Testbeds Using Meccano, Final Report, 27-April-2005, PDF, 2471 KB
• '3D printer to churn out copies of itself', Celeste Biever, NewScientist.com news service, 18 March 2005
• 'The machine that can copy anything', Simon Hooper, CNN, Thursday, June 2, 2005
• Self Replicating Robots And The Developing World., KnowProSE.com, Sunday June 5, 2005.

See also

• Robot
• John von Neumann
• Clanking replicator
• Von Neumann machine
• Rapid prototyping