Say we found an artifact or piece of technology that wasnt created by humans. How would we go about reverse engineering it? How do technology companies reverse engineer competitors ideas?
In: Engineering
ELI5:
1. Start with what it does or what you think it’s made out of.
2. Teardowns and tests – you can bounce your theories off what your team finds when they take apart a widget.
3. You can describe what the widget or lines of code do to your team and then have them work on doing something similar – [This is “clean room design” (wikipedia link).](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design). That’s how the BIOS (basic system that controls a computer) was reverse engineered by a computer firm. One team described what each section of code did and another team attempted to do just that on their own. Legally they didn’t copy the trademarked code – they got the same results another way.
4. There’s just flat out copying what was done – the Soviet era Tu-4 “Bull” bomber was copied from American B-29 bombers stranded in Russia during WWII. Tu-4’s were built that were complete copies – down to the temporary wartime repairs done on American B-29’s.
There’s a limit to how well reverse engineering can work.
I remember the TV show NOVA on PBS in the 1980’s – Back in the day, on one episode of NOVA, they showed some Soviet (Yes I am old) scientists who had gotten their hands on a Japanese industrial robot.
They had reverse engineered it’s programing and operating systems to the point where it could do whatever they wanted – but they couldn’t make one because of the accuracy and fine tolerances of it’s motors. The 1980’s era Soviet milling and machining technology wasn’t up to making motors with the accuracy and tolerances done in Japan.
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