Mange D Stauffer A Petraglio E Tempesti G 2004 After a survey of the theory and some realizations of self-replicating machines, this paper presents a novel self-replicating loop endowed with universal construction and computation properties. Based on the hardware implementation of the so-called Tom Thumb algorithm, the design of this loop leads to a new kind of cellular automaton made of a processing and a control units. The self-replication of the Swiss flag serves as an artificial cell division example of the loop which, according to autopoietic evaluation criteria, corresponds to a cell showing the phenomenology of a living system. https://sonar.ch/global/documents/1673 eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1016/j.biosystems.2004.05.010 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pmid/15351139 Bio Systems. - 2004 Algorithms Animals Artificial Intelligence Biological Evolution Cell Division Cell Proliferation Computer Simulation Feedback Humans Models, Biological Artificial cell division. http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501