Can robot or a device be made that, given the requisite resources, could construct and assemble a functional copy of itself?
To entertain this hypothesis further, let’s add a set of explicit constraints or expectations:
- The copy must structurally match the original device as is realistically possible
- The device must be able to manufacture at least one copy of itself
- The overall replication process should sustain itself for an indefinite amount of iterations
- The device must not repurpose its own parts as parts for its copy
- The device must not peform any task other than replicating itself and preserving itself to be able to replicate
- The device may sustain damages of repairable or non-repairable nature as long as it obeys constraints 1 and 2
- The device may take as much time and resources as it needs to construct its copy as long as both remain finite
- The device may make use of essential external resources like electricity and cooling to sustain itself as long as its able to accommodate its copy to do the same
Can reproduction be emulated mechanically while obeying all the constraints above or is there a fundamental limitation stopping us from realising this concept? If so, what is it?


What ultimately stopps us is the fact that the universe is expanding infintly. In the long run more matter is moving away from us than towards us. And this is true for everywhere in the universe. All atoms will eventually become subatomic particles that are increasingly less likely to interact with one another due to them moving away from one another.