Robots

From Gothpoodle

Robots are everywhere. Robots range from the simplest of automatic devices to the most sophisticated of artificial intelligences. Some “robots” are even human, in the sense that their “programs” are centered on uploaded human personalities. In addition to industrial robots built into factories, the various classes of robots include:

Microbots

These tiny mobile robots range in size from insect to dust mite. A single microbot has limited utility and intelligence, but a swarm of hundreds or thousands is another matter. Microbots are controlled by pinhead-sized computers running simple programs modeled on insect behavior patterns. A colony of such robots (a “cyberswarm”) has intelligence superior to that of any component part, just as an ant colony is an extremely adaptive organism. Many buildings and vehicles have their own hives of microbots living within the machinery or structure, performing routine maintenance and repair tasks. Microbots also have industrial, agricultural, medical, espionage, and military applications. Microbot toy sets exist, such as model farms, zoos, communities, or battlefields, with tiny microbot people, vehicles, or animals. Precocious Fifth Wave kids with cleverly modified microbot construction kits can cause all sorts of mischief.

Cybershells

A cybershell is a machine body larger than a microbot that is designed to house a controlling intelligence. Cybershells range from the size of a mouse on up. Cybershells come in all shapes, from humanoids to things that look like artificial insects, snakes, or vehicles.

A cybershell consists of a frame containing computer, sensor, power, and communications systems and, in some cases, manipulators, means of propulsion, and other gadgets. The solar system is home to about 30 billion cybershells. A minority are androids, but the vast majority have more functional designs. Most house nonsapient AIs, but any infomorph can be used if the cybershell’s built-in computer is powerful enough to run it. The latest small computers are powerful enough that a cat-sized or larger cybershell could conceivably be fitted with one capable of housing a sapient infomorph.

Inhabited vehicles or spacecraft capable of being controlled by computer are not called cybershells. The term is applied to the hardware installed within. Thus, a spacecraft may contain several cybershells: its mainframe computers, various work robots, each crewmember’s virtual interface, etc.

Models

• Buzzbot (2075): Small aerial cybershells are used on Earth, Mars, and Titan for everything from aerial surveys to photojournalism to package delivery. Israel Robotics’ IRI-4 Malachi is typical: a miniature helicopter with two shrouded counter-rotating rotors, a cluster of simple sensors, and one manipulator arm. 5 lbs., 1’ tall.
• Computer: This cybershell is a static computer: It has external sensors and communication systems, but cannot directly manipulate objects or move under its own power, although it can surf the Web.
• Cryobot (2073): Cryobots are built for ice-penetrating amphibious operations, and have been used beneath Antarctica, Europa, and Callisto. Vosper-Babbage’s Vostok is a typical cryobot, usually used for research and engineering, but it can carry hand-held weapons. It is a 2’-wide hemisphere housing a radiothermal generator and hydrojet propulsion unit. Behind the hemisphere is a cylindrical post 1’ wide and 3’ high, atop which is a spherical brainsensor housing. Halfway up the post are three folded manipulators that can act as arms or legs. The Vostok is designed to melt its way through ice, then explore underwater. It can walk tripod-fashion on its limbs, or balance on two of them and use the last as an arm. 400 lbs., 5’ tall.
• Cyberdoc (2070): System Technologies’ Hippocrates is a typical highend medical cybershell. It looks a bit like a mechanical starfish. Its limbs are studded with pressure, sonic, and microvisual sensors. Three of its “legs” do double duty as arms, and these are tipped with claws that are able to perform ordinary operations or microsurgery, or inject drugs. It can manufacture its own drugs. In extreme cases, it can even enfold a patient, placing him into life support or filtering his blood. 150 lbs., 5’ wide.
• Cyberdog (2063): The Gemini Volksrobotics Phydeaux is designed to look and act like a household pet. The cyberdog always has soft fur and appealing features, but doesn’t necessarily resemble a dog; the external styling can be made to match a very large cat, a fox, a bear cub, even a fantasy creature. Internal machinery mimics the body heat, breathing, and pulse of a real animal, although a close examination will reveal the cyberdog’s mechanical nature. A cyberdog is often kept in homes that have children, acting as a guard, faithful companion, and teacher. The internal AI can speak, or interface with household systems to provide complex visual displays. At night, the cyberdog’s keen senses and sleepless nature make it a superb household guardian. 35 lbs., 3’ long.
• Cyberdoll (2080): Cyberdolls are androids designed to look like people. The Clockwork Souls Android/Gynoid range are typical: beautiful, anatomically correct, and fully functional. Their lack of a pulse and inability to sweat, breathe, tan, bleed, or bruise can reveal their true nature, as will any medical or X-ray scan.
  • Infiltration Android (2090): Deep Indigo is a secret combat model developed by Nanodynamics for the CIA and SIA.
• Polypede (2078): Tenzan Heavy Industry’s Polypede is typical of multifunctional engineering polybots. It consists of multiple chains of intersecting modules, each with its own small manipulators, sensors, and power supply. Its default form is a 6’-wide “spider” with six legs and two arm-legs, but by removing and locking modules, it can reconfigure itself into a 20’-long burrowing worm, a 20’-long robotic arm (which must clamp one end to a larger object such as a vehicle or spacecraft), or even a high-speed rolling hoop! It can also plug other heavy equipment into itself, allowing its use in many engineering tasks such as grading, loading, mining, and heavy-equipment assembly. 800 lbs.
• RATS (2070): Robotic Armored Tactical Systems (RATS) are stealthy ground-combat cybershells intended to supplement or replace human infantry. The Darwin-Sogo Type 100 Yamaneko (“mountain cat”) is typical: an ovoid fourlegged body, with two short manipulator arms, retractable sensor booms, and a protruding gun tube. The spines studding its torso detect air vibrations, while its clawed legs enable it to burrow through sand or soil easily. 6’ long, 250 lbs.
• Snakebot (2067): Various snakebots have been popular since the early 21st century. The Naga, from Dhanmondi Dataflex of Bangladesh, is a typical example: a multi-segmented serpentine cybershell designed for search and rescue, maintenance, and scouting. It can easily navigate complex terrain: burrowing through loose soil; crawling down fissures, ducts, or sewers; and slithering up scaffolds or trees. The Naga can also transform its entire body into a robot arm by clamping one end to a heavier object, or become a hoop for rapid rolling movement. The “head” of the Naga incorporates two short tentacle manipulators and a multifunctional sensor and communications suite. 7’ long, 60 lbs. Combat models exist with stealth technology and weaponry.
• UCAV (2090): Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs) are robot fighter aircraft. Strix is a typical example: a hyper-agile close air support fighter from Eurospatiale, built for the French Armée de l’Air and the submarine carriers of the Marine Nationale, and widely exported. Strix is a tailless aircraft, 8’ long, with a blended wing-body configuration. The airframe is a reactive smart-matter nanocomposite cyberframe stressed to 30 Gs, which has an integrated ECM defense system. The airframe can dynamically alter its shape in flight for increased lift or maneuverability. Strix’s vectored-thrust turbofan has sea-level supercruise in excess of 1,100 mph. Weaponry is a 15mm emag cannon with 400 rounds, plus an internal bay that can house up to 200 lbs. of bombs or smart missiles. 800 lbs.
• Virtual Interface Implant (2047): Many infomorphs live inside people! This cybershell is a virtual interface implant: a tiny computer brain and communicator, seated in someone’s skull or distributed through his body, and connected to the host’s nervous system. It sees and hears using its host’s senses, can communicate both with him and the outside world (including the Web), and monitor his health and mental state.
• Volkspider (2070): Volksrobots are cheap but reliable cybershells designed for a wide range of activities, from acting as personal gofers to repairing and cleaning buildings. The System Technologies V-100 Volkspider is typical: a six-legged, two-armed machine with minimal accessories. Fifth Wave kids often knock together machines like this from kits, teleoperating them around the neighborhood or loading in their companions. Suction cups let it climb walls. 2’ across, 25 lbs.
  • Tech-Spider: Space-tech cybershells such as the Tenzan Heavy Industries THI-200 Suchi-Rukara (steel-collar worker) are common.
• Wearable Virtual Interface: A wearable virtual interface could be virtual interface glasses or a distributed virtual interface (DVI) consisting of a monocle, ear piece, and belt computer. It sees and hears using the sensors built into it, and can speak to its wearer directly, or anyone else via radio. A Printed DVI has some of its circuits tattooed on the user’s body or clothing.
• Wingbot (2078): The Kenzaki Robotics Tengu is a multipurpose cybershell, suitable for bodyguard, perimeter security, and microbot delivery functions. It is physically delicate and weak, but very fast even when confined to the ground. In the air, it can reach speeds of up to 80 miles per hour, its mobility limited only by the requirements of winged flight. It has two arms, with an electroshock device installed in one and a pneumatic drug injector in the other; these are generally used as nonlethal weapons in defense of the robot’s owner. Cargo compartments in the body and each wing are designed to carry up to 3 lbs. of microbots, which can be delivered by the cybershell in either walking or flying modes. If the wingbot stays on the ground, it can stretch out its battery charge for up to 30 hours. The batteries are depleted after only about two hours of flight. 45 lbs., 3’ long.

Bush Robots

Just coming into use are fractal-branching ultradexterous manipulator robots, a term usually ignored in favor of “bush robot.” A bush robot’s arms each branch into multiple “fingers,” each of which branches into a set of smaller fingers, and so on, down to micrometer or (theoretically) nanometer scale. Each set of fingers is capable of independent sensing and operation; a “bushbot” can perform complex repairs, or even surgery, without special tools. The amount of computing power required is staggering; therefore, bush robots able to do much more than micromanipulation require sophisticated computer systems.

• Bush Robot (2097): One of the few bush robots to see commercial sales is the Exogenesis Bushmaster. It is a stickframe bush robot with three manipulator arms equipped with multi-branching, ultra-dexterous fractal manipulators. Its arms double as legs; thrusters mounted beneath its body provide zero-G maneuverability. Its computer brain is distributed through its body rather than centralized in any one place. Only 326 Bushmasters were made before Exogenesis was sold, but Nanodynamics will likely resume production. A few dozen were acquired by the European Space Control Agency and presently serve aboard E.U. spacecraft. Several Bushmasters hosting SAIs and ghosts are among the orphaned Exogenesis cybershells resisting the Nanodynamics takeover. 80 lbs., 5’ tall.

Bioshells

A bioshell is a living body, often a bioroid or human clone, whose brain was genetically or surgically rendered decereberate so it never developed higher functions. It is controlled by an implanted computer housing an infomorph, usually a low-sapient AI, sapient AI, or mind emulation.

The first bioshells created in the 2070s were only fitted with computers running low-sapient AIs or shadows. In the early 2090s, Exogenesis corporation developed a computer small enough to fit in a bioshell body and smart enough to house a sapient AI or ghost, and bioshells became much more popular. There are presently many tens of thousands of them in the solar system. Roughly half host ghosts or sapient AIs, enabling them to experience a more human-like existence. In fact, some bioshells based on human clones have even given birth to human children, a practice that remains quite controversial.

A bioshell’s legal status will depend on the infomorph occupying the body. However, bioshells sometimes upset people (“A zombie!”). The creation of bioshells is totally banned in some areas, notably the Islamic Caliphate, and regulated in the European Union, which only allows bioshells to be owned by sapient AIs or ghosts for their personal use. Other cultures, such as the Duncanites, treat bioshells no differently from cybershells.

• Necromorph Bioshell: It is possible to use a combination of cellular regeneration and tissue engineered transplants to repair a corpse and reanimate it as a bioshell.