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"The best fuzzy rules, the best knowledge, deal with the turning points of the system. If a race-car driver teaches you how to drive, you don't need him to show you how to drive on the straightaway. It's how he handles the curves that matters."
- Bart Kosko

Self-Assembling Robots  
  Robots with the capacity to assemble themselves from components, and then switch themselves on.  

This is a relatively early, explicit reference to this idea in sf.

The Sheem Robots were modeled after living animals of various worlds, and the Spider is considered to have been the most perfect of them all. This is the last specimen still in existence. You asked whether I had assembled it recently... Yes, I have. It's a most simple process...

The captain swung the gun up, pointed it at Yango's chest.

"What are you hiding?" he asked.

"Why, the activating mechanism," Yango frowned puzzledly. "I understood you wished to see it assembled. You see, the Sheen Robots assemble themselves when the signal to to it is registered by them."

Technovelgy from The Witches of Karres, by James Schmitz.
Published by Chilton in 1966
Additional resources -

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Witches of Karres
  More Ideas and Technology by James Schmitz
  Tech news articles related to The Witches of Karres
  Tech news articles related to works by James Schmitz

Self-Assembling Robots-related news articles:
  - CkBot Modular Robot Self-Assembles, Picks Gait
  - Self-Assembling Robot Swarm
  - Robot Lamp Assembles Itself (Via 3D Printer)

Articles related to Robotics
DIY Robotic Content Farming
Vero Robotic Dog With Vacuum Cleaner Feet
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin

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'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'

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'The chief wheeled to the master machine and pressed a button.'

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'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'

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'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'

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'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'

Vero Robotic Dog With Vacuum Cleaner Feet
'Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted.'

AI Operates An Excavator
'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'

Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'

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'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'

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'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'

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