Nature makes hardware the way we make software: it invented a code and lets the hardware build itself using that code. This makes making updates easy and quick. It achieved incredible sophistication with live organisms: every new organism is an upgrade with code updated with other parent’s code and some random (as it seems) mutations.

Our first, clumsy attempt to build hardware in a similar way, was the invention of 3D printing. Assembly line robots do not really build hardware but rather help with specific functions, in other words, at least for now, they cannot build anything notable from design blueprints. 3D printers can, though, technically, 3D printers are robots too.