Artificial life is a diverse field of research, but a common theme is teasing cut the fundamental principles of life by building detailed working models. One of the most ambitious goals of artificial-life research is the construction of living systems out of non-living parts. Most of the artificial systems built remain strictly inside a computer, but on page 974 of this issue Hod Lipson and Jordan Pollack take a first step towards bridging the gap between computer models and physical reality. They describe a system that evolves locomotive machines inside a computer and then automatically builds them, using rapid-prototyping technology, so that they can move around in the physical world.
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