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
The difference between messing around and science/engineering is writing it down and the price of the tools.
They’d scan it from a million angles with various forms of scan, they’d have a 3D model, probably slice by slice of the thing, then they’d slowly start taking it to bits and documenting absolutely everything, where it went, what it’s made of, exact sizes, anything unusual.
At this point they’ll have broken the *thing* down into it’s sub systems, they’d maybe look at one and go “this thing looks like it does x” they’d maybe power up, just that bit and running tests – they’d have figured out the power requirements by looking at any sort of transformer or power input.
Eventually they’d know intimately what every screw does, why it’s there and what for… If it was something they wanted, they’d replicate it based on the knowledge learned and test.
Tl;dr: smash it to bits and mess around with it… Just like a toddler would do, only do it carefully and write everything down.
Go to McDonald’s and buy a big Mac. Open the box and take out the sandwich and then take the top bun off. From there, take the next item off and repeat the steps until you’ve separated each ingredient.
You now know all the components, basic amounts and the order of everything involved in the big Mac.
With very little extra effort you could recreate the big Mac from what you learned.
While this is an incredibly basic and simplified example, it is accurate in how reverse engineering works.
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