Automation self-reference

<p>In this paper an abstract, deterministic, discrete kinematic automaton system for expressing machine computation, construction, and self-inspection has been designed. Burks’s conjecture that a machine can by self-inspection obtain its own complete structural description and store the information sufficient to recover this description, within a proper part of itself is confirmed. We also exhibit a machine which though not initially equipped with a structural description of itself, can reproduce itself, thus providing a counterexample to a conjecture of von Neumann and confirming a conjecture of Arbib.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Mechanical Engineering

Year

1977

Author dc:creator

• Laing, Richard Alan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Howard Pattee
• Andrew Barto
• Dennis Geller

• Machine theory

Repository record dc:identifier

https://orb.binghamton.edu/dissertation_and_theses/362

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:orb.binghamton.edu:dissertation_and_theses-1368