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"In 1970 I found little difficulty staying 30 years ahead of the man in the street, and now I find it difficult to stay 18 months ahead of the man on the street."
- Vernor Vinge

Teleoperated Lab Robot  
  A robot is used to conduct experiments in an environment too extreme for humans.  

One of the operators of a remotely controlled beetle car is inspecting a project deep in the atmosphere of Jupiter. He is surprised to find a laboratory, with an occupant hard at work.

...Helmuth saw instead that there was a large platform jutting out from the buttress not far below him, just to one side of the rails. It was enclosed and roofed, but the material was transparent. And there was motion inside it...

For a wild instant he had thought there was a man on Jupiter already; but as he pulled up just above the platform's roof, he realized that the moving thing inside was - of course - a robot; a misshapen, many-tentacled thing about twice the size of a man. It was working busily with bottles and flasks, of which it seemed to have thousands on benches and shelves all around it The whole enclosure was a litter of what Helmuth took to be chemical apparatus, and off to one side was an object which might have been a microscope...

The robot looked up at him and gesticulated with two or three tentacles...

"This is Doc Barth. How do you like my laboratory?"

Technovelgy from Cities in Flight, by James Blish.
Published by Avon in 1957
Additional resources -

It turns out that this is the only way to study the 'jellyfish' of Jupiter, life forms that float freely in the upper levels of the planet.

Compare to the teleoperated mechanical men from The Ancient Brain (1929) by AG Stangland and the space laboratory from Crystalized Thought (1937) by Nat Schachner.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Cities in Flight
  More Ideas and Technology by James Blish
  Tech news articles related to Cities in Flight
  Tech news articles related to works by James Blish

Teleoperated Lab Robot-related news articles:
  - Robonaut ISS Checkout Video
  - Russia's SAR-400 To Work Alongside Robonaut 2
  - Mahoro Two-Armed Lab Robot
  - Students Control Lab Experiments Remotely Via App
  - The Remotely-Operated Cold Atom Laboratory
  - Yes, Teleoperated Optimus Robots Are A $Trillion Business Right Now
  - Your Window For Being A Tesla Optimus Remote Operator May Be Closing

Articles related to Robotics
Mori3 Autonomous Shapeshifting Robot
Tesla Seeks 'Tesla Robotaxi' And 'Robobus' Trademarks Ignoring Prior Art
Scary Grid Safety Robots
Humanoid Boxing Robot KO's Opponent - It's A Knockout!

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