Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!fs7.ece.cmu.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uunet!hobbes!earth.armory.com!rstevew
From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Help Needed on Robot Planet Settler
Organization: The Armory
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 1994 13:41:53 GMT
Message-ID: <CxM61v.7zH@armory.com>
References: <377pbf$4ji@manuel.anu.edu.au>
Sender: news@armory.com (Usenet News)
Nntp-Posting-Host: deepthought.armory.com
Lines: 30

In article <377pbf$4ji@manuel.anu.edu.au>,
 <ultrasonic@mooseheads.anu.edu.au> wrote:
>Hi Everyone,
>		I'm currently working on a Robotics project...it's
>in its final throes, but I still need some information on an idea
>put forward several years ago about this robot lander which would
>extend itself to produce other robots, and eventually build a small
>city for humans to move into.
>		Does anyone have any information on this one at all?
>		Anything much appreciated!!
>						Sigi.
--------------------------------------------
I saw a blurb on it as well years ago from NASA, and it focused on two
basic functions, namely a replicator of the individual builder robots, and
either them being multiple cooperative types or an all-purpose type which
would build 1) a solar smelter and ore foundry for channel and sheet, and
another which would 2) roll it into tubes and weld it from solar power, and
another 3) which would make endcaps for it that were concave and another which
would bury them under lunar soil. It was left to another more specialized
welding robot to weld them together on a spine tube and then test each unit
for pressure. And all these had to have their worked checked by some master
inspectors/managers which would be an interface to earth, disabling or
repairing defective robots using the original replicator robots. This was
all speculative at that time, but the old L5 society was hot for it.
Whatever happened to them?? I heard they were engulfed by a government
sponsored group that they never enjoyed and finally drifted apart. I see no
more reference to them in the literature I run into. What ever happened!??
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com


