Self-Replicating Mechanical Universal Turing Machine
This work addresses the challenge of achieving self-replication with computational power, which is foundational for fields like artificial life and robotics, though it builds incrementally on prior self-replicating structures.
The paper tackled the problem of demonstrating computational universality in self-replicating systems by constructing a self-replicating finite-state machine and Turing machine using bio-inspired mechanisms, resulting in the emulation of the UTM(5,5) to prove universality.
This paper presents the implementation of a self-replicating finite-state machine (FSM) and a self-replicating Turing Machine (TM) using bio-inspired mechanisms. Building on previous work that introduced self-replicating structures capable of sorting, copying, and reading information, this study demonstrates the computational power of these mechanisms by explicitly constructing a functioning FSM and TM. This study demonstrates the universality of the system by emulating the UTM(5,5) of Neary and Woods.