Biological life is in control of its own means of reproduction, which generally involves complex, autocatalysing chemical reactions. But this autonomy of design and manufacture has not yet been realized artificially. Robots are still laboriously designed and constructed by teams of human engineers, usually at considerable expense. Few robots are available because these costs must be absorbed through mass production, which is justified only for toys, weapons and industrial systems such as automatic teller machines. Here we report the results of a combined computational and experimental approach in which simple electromechanical systems are evolved through simulations from basic building blocks (bars, actuators and artificial neurons); the 'fittest' machines (defined by their locomotive ability) are then fabricated robotically using rapid manufacturing technology. We thus achieve autonomy of design and construction using evolution in a 'limited universe' physical simulation coupled to automatic fabrication.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 59. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 06 March 2024.
All research outputs
#907,075
of 33,924,920 outputs
Outputs from Nature
#32,059
of 116,676 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#525
of 55,238 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature
#18
of 357 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,924,920 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 97th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 116,676 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 95.8. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 72% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 55,238 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 357 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
