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"[Science fiction is] nightmares and visions, always outlined by the barely possible."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| Service Drones | ||
| Small flying construction and repair robots. |
| A sudden rushing sound, like that of high-velocity ducted air, mixed with a fainter electric whine, came from halfway up the wall to their right... It was an array of open compartments that looked like pigeon holes for mail, except that each was a foot or more square...
The noise was coming from one of these objects. The object that it was coming from was a dull-gray cylinder about six inches across, lying on its side on top of a flat tubular framework that contained a mass of tightly packed gadgetry and wiring. The near end of the cylinder was distinctly insectlike, with a profusion of miniature probes and jointed arms, and a circle of recessed windows that could have been lens apertures. The whole thing was starting to move. As they watched speechless, it slid smoothly out of its cell like a metal wasp emerging from its nest, and hung in midair a foot or so in front of the pigeonholes... The wasp homed unerringly on the face of the honeycomb. It extended three of its tiny arms sideways to lock onto the registration pins located at intervals across the face and then, holding itself quite steady in the air, traversed slowly sideways until its axis was aligned with the array element from which Chris had taken the cartridge. Nobody could see quite what happened next because the wasp was flush against the face, but suddenly the widget-maker clicked into life again. The wasp detached itself and turned back to point at its cell. There was no need for Hayes to explain what had happened. It didn't take much thought to see that other wasps, equipped with suitable tools and carrying the right selection of parts, could replace far more things than just electronic microcartridges, provided of course that the equipment being serviced had been designed for it. "They're called drones," Hayes told them. "I'm sure I don't have to spell out the idea." |
| Technovelgy from The Two Faces of Tomorrow,
by James P. Hogan. Published by Del Rey in 1979 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the repair robots from The Well-Oiled Machine (1950) by H.B. Fyfe,
Self-Maintaining Circuit Monitoring and Repair from Gramp and his Dog (1952) by Frank Quattrocchi, the
self-repairing robot from Accidental Flight (1952) by W.F. Wallace, the blue collar robot from The Velvet Glove (1956) by Harry Harrison and the repair drone from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson.
Thanks to Winchell Chung for contributing this item.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Two Faces of Tomorrow
More Ideas
and Technology by James P. Hogan
Tech news articles related to The Two Faces of Tomorrow
Tech news articles related to works by James P. Hogan
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- Autonomous Construction By Teams Of Quadrotor Robots
- Quadrotor Robots Improve Building Skills Video
- RFly Drones Rule The Warehouse
- Gather, An AI Warehouse Inventory Drone Startup
- FlyCroTug Micro Drones Do Heavy Lifting
- FlyCroTug Drones Work In Teams Now
| Varda Space Industries Orbital Factories |
| Boring Company Bricks Predicted In 1929 |
| Is It Possible To GROW Planes And Vehicles? |
| Scaly-Foot Snail Works With Iron |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
