I blogged about Dr Adrian Bowyer and his RepRap Project back in March. Now, the Project has its own site and CNN has (finally!) got round to reporting the news (link via Boing Boing). From the front page of the Project's site:
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.
A rapid prototyper is a machine that can manufacture objects directly (usually, though not necessarily, in plastic) under the control of a computer.
The project described in these pages is working towards creating a universal constructor by using rapid prototyping, and then giving the results away free under the GNU General Public Licence to allow other investigators to work on the same idea. We are trying to prove the hypothesis: Rapid prototyping and direct writing technologies are sufficiently versatile to allow them to be used to make a von Neumann Universal Constructor.
Martin G commented on my original posting, 'Don’t we have to ask ourselves, 'What’s new here?'. Anyone who’s bought an off the shelf Rapid Prototyping machine can of course feed in CAD files of anything they wish — including parts for new RP machines . . .' As I noted back then, Dr Bowyer (private communication) said, 'As far as I am aware, I am the first person to suggest using rapid prototyping to make a von Neumann Universal Constructor'.
There's also a RepRap blog — and it has a feed.
