Abstract. The concept of man-made self-replicatingm achines was first proposed by John von Neumann more t han5 0 years ago. However, t hereh as never been aphysical implementation of his universalconstructor architectureas a robotic system.Prior too ur other recent work,a nautonomous self-replicating mechanical s ystem hadn ot been developed. In t his paper, w ed emonstrateanon-von-Neumann architecturef or the replication of transistor circuits by active self-inspection. That is, therearen oi nstructions stored about how toconstruct the circuit,b ut information observed about the spatial organization of the originalcircuit drives alarger electromechanical( robotic) system in whichi t is embedded tocause the production of a replica of the originalcircuit.In the workp resented here,only replication of the control circuit is of interest.In the current context, the electromechanicalh ardwarei s viewed as a tool whichi s manipulated by the control circuit for its own reproduction.This architecturalp aradigm is demonstrated with prototypes that are reviewed hereand compared withani mplementation of the universal constructor concept. 1Introduction 1.1Motivation The concept of man-made self-replicatingmachines was first proposed by John von Neumann more thanf ifty years ag
