Re: Little off-topic but still pretty cool! Self-Replicating robots.

In lugnet.robotics, Harri Manni wrote:
> Self-replicating robots video:
> http://www.mae.cornell.edu/ccsl/research/selfrep/video/4x4ht4a.mpg
>
> ABC-news article: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=748180
>
> Slashdot:
> http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/05/05/11/2242239.shtml?tid=216&tid=126

About ten years ago I wrote a fairly simple isometric graphics program. It
created a plane rotated through 45 degrees. This enabled me too create 3D
objects.

I wrote two programs within the larger program. One created replicating robots
from a pile of atoms(pixels) which then went on to build somthing else. The
other allowed you to build a shape out of cubes. You could then animate the
cubes. I had one animation where a 2x2 set of cubes repeatedly slid over one
another so they walked down the screen. It was very remiscent of the video,
although my cubes didn't do the cool rotation in the middle.

The programs were very basic, written in Borland C++ and using CGI graphics but
the 3D effect was very good.

Steve