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"I've been very obsessive about writing science fiction for far too many years. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have given up years ago."
- Charles Stross
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| Robot Team | ||
| A set of robots, with the leader able to coordinate the activities of less intelligent subsidiary robots. |
DV-5 was an unusual robot; besides being an asteroid mining robot, it was also able to direct six other less intelligent robots in mining activities.
| Powell regarded Dave — laymen might think of robots by their serial numbers : roboticists never — with approval. It was not over-massive by any means, in spite of its construction as thinking-unit of an integrated seven-unit robot team. It was seven feet tall, and a lousy half-ton of metal and electricity. A lot? Not when that half-ton has to be a mass of condensers, circuits, relays, and vacuum cells that can handle practically any psychological reaction known to humans. And a positronic brain, which with ten pounds of matter and a few quintillion quintillions of positrons runs the whole show.
 (Subsidiary robots in 'Catch that Rabbit' by Isaac Asimov) "Look, that robot, DV-5, has six robots under it. And not just under it - they're part of it..." He watched the posturings of the robots on the visiplate. They were bronzy gleams of smooth motion against the shadowy crags of the airless asteroid. There was a marching formation now, and in their own dim body light, the rough-hewn walls of the mine tunnel swam past noiselessly, checkered with misty erratic blobs of shadow. They marched in unison, seven of them, with Dave at the head. They wheeled and turned in macabre simultaneity; and melted through changes of formation with the weird ease of chorus dancers in Lunar Bowl. |
| Technovelgy from Catch That Rabbit,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1944 Additional resources -
|
The subsidiary robots were called "fingers."
The humans finally figure out what's going on with the strange movements of the subsidiary robots:
“That? I don't know. But I’ve got a notion. Remember, those subsidiaries were Dave’s ‘fingers’. We were always saying that, you know. Well, it’s my idea that in all these interludes, whenever Dave became a psychiatric case, he went off into a moronic maze, spending his time twiddling his fingers.”
There is also a lot of interest in the idea of robots that work cooperatively; see Bees Key to Cooperative Robotics for more information.
Compare to the supervisor robot from Manners of the Age (1952) by HB Fyfe.
Neither Powell nor Donovan had ever had previous occasion to talk to a "finger." It could talk; it wasn't quite the perfect analogy to a human finger. In fact, it had a fairly developed brain, but that brain was tuned primarily to the reception of orders via positronic field, and its reaction to independent stimuli was rather fumbling.
The idea of "multiple robots" is an idea that has received a lot of current interest. Take a look at Robotic Safety Barrels; these small robots are a close match to Asimov's idea of a team of robots.
“Hey, wait! Just tell me one thing. What were those queer shifting marches, those funny dance steps, that the robots went through every time they went screwy."
(Subsidiary robots in 'Catch that Rabbit' by Isaac Asimov)
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Catch That Rabbit
More Ideas
and Technology by Isaac Asimov
Tech news articles related to Catch That Rabbit
Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov
Robot Team-related
news articles:
- Robotic Safety Barrels: Smart Traffic Cones
- Multi-Robot Pursuit System: We'll Be Back!
- NASA's Multi-Robot Planetary Exploration
- Synchronizing Humanoid Robot Swarms
- VelociRoACH Insect Robots Cooperate
- Robots Learn To Swarm Safely
- X2-VelociRoACH Cooperates To Launch Tiny Drones
- LoadRunner Robot Works Alone, Or In A Group
- CADRE Robots To Work In Teams On Other Planets
| Robots Repair And Modify Themselves |
| Robot Janitors Get To Work |
| Robots Learn To Install Charged Batteries Into Themselves |
| Robot Rabbits Entice Pythons |
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'The peculiar quality of this light, which gave it its great preeminence over all other penetrating rays...'
'The overworked leg motor would have to cool down before he could work on it...'
‘Where to, sport?’ the starter at cab relay asked.
This is nothing new for science fiction fans!
'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
