Robots: Bots vs Droids
Feng Shu Davidson had been a roboticist for 40 years, and in the twilight of his days he found he often preferred their company to most humans, with the questionable exception of his protege synthoid Jane. For most of those 40 years, each evening he would climb, alone, to the top of a tall hill outside the university campus, and there watch the sunset and meditate.
One evening, he invited Jane, a Droid and a Bot to come with him.
As the sun finished setting, and the calls of the night birds started, he turned to Jane and asked, “What do you think?”
She blushed, and smiled at the man she’d moved from respecting to loving decades ago, and gently cupped his old wrinkled cheek with one hand.
He turned to the Droid - “Bee Arr Five Four Nine, what do you think?”
The Droid faced him politely, a hint of a smile on its face. The eyes regarded the scholar, and multiple parallel processors split the image, doing an amount of pre-processing that would have been more than enough to run a small spacecraft before handing thousands of data elements to a positronic brain and it’s intricate pathways. The moment of hesitation before the Droid spoke was something it had learned to do, because answering too quickly made humans think it did not take the question seriously.
BR-54-9’s mellow voice responded softly , “Sir, at long last I understand why you come here each evening.Thank you for sharing it with me.”
Feng smiled and nodded before looking at the last of their company.
“Helperbot, what do you think?”
The pause this time was not the hesitance of a person thinking before answering, but a long consideration. The small light on Helpterbot’s face, next to the single lens of its camera, blinked steadily, indicating it had heard the question. The sounds from the microphone after “Helperbot” were put through an 8 parallel processor core and run through a machine learning comparison that was based on data collected 300 years ago but was still ‘good enough’. The images from the camera were split into simpler matrices of lower resolution images to ease processing, and the 32 core processor ran that through machine learning trees older than the oaks around the park bench the humans were sitting on. Finally, the monotone voice replied, “No objects recognized which apply to currently running tasks.”
The T5 Rules-As-Written on Robots build things that are capable of being PCs. They are the Droids of movies like Star Wars, smart and sassy and inventive.
And they start at about a half million credits and go up from there. Even if you amortize them over 40 years, they cost more than ten times as much as hiring a human to do field work.
Which leaves … Bots.
They’re not a lot better than what’s currently being built on Earth. In some ways, worse: Boston Dynamics and others are building human form robots, or dog-form, or mule-form. Legs that handle rough terrain better than wheels or tracks.
Bots are able to do work under supervision, as opposed to the T5 Robots (Droids) that are able to do things on their own.
T5 makes a distinction between Consoles being task enablers, and Computers being task resolvers… in a way, Bots are the Consoles. They assist a sophont in doing things but aren’t really bright enough to be trusted to do it on their own. On the other hand, a single sophont can supervise several Farmbots, letting them plow and seed and spray, intervening when the Bots get confused… which is a work-multiplier compared to one person driving the tractor themselves.
Droids are Task Completers - you can hand them something to do, and they'll do it as well as a similarly skilled sophont without being supervised.
Bot design follows the T5 Robots rules, except:
- Things from Classic Traveller Book 8 “Robots” can be purchased and installed where cheaper. The biggest impact here:
- instead of around 500kcr for visual, audio and olfactory sensors, the cost is 1700cr.
- Instead of buying legs for 20+kcr, wheels or tracks are simplified: 20% of chassis volume, at 15cr per unit gets you some high torque brushless motors and tough plastic wheels/tracks. Bots move at human walking speeds on flat terrain and are stuck on rocky/steep terrain
- For 10kcr, a TL9 Bot can use Lifters (Z-Drive) for 10kcr and 20 units of volume per module. These modules support up to 200kg / 200 volume units.
- Instead of buying limbs in T5, they can be bought from the book 8 price list. Again, large price savings
- On the Brain side:
- Only electronic brains can be used
- Maximum C4 is 4. C5=Instinct, with a default value of 2. This leaves the Bot with a maximum of 4 skills at level-2, which makes C+S=6. At the bottom end, they’ve got C4=1, C5=2 for a single skill and C+S=3. Easy tasks with skill don’t require a roll. Routine tasks can be done cautiously and succeed half the time at the bottom end, and always at the top end… but a sudden event that’s Routine probably won’t, and a Difficult or harder task is unlikely to work out well. (A Farmbot can drive into or out of the barn (Easy) and make it to the field it’s supposed to plow. It can carefully drive up and down the rows (Routine->Easy) and avoid obstacles. It can handle the inevitable rocks that come up during plowing by going slowly (Routine->Easy) but when a local animal gets in the field and decides to be territorial, staring down the Farmbot, it’s a sudden event and it rolls 2d6 vs 6. Failure means it stops and sends a radio message to its operator that there’s an issue.)
- Bots only do things for which they have skills. They error rather than attempt. (“Helperbot, make me some popcorn.” “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that.”)
- Bots can not learn from experience: skills do not increase. New skills are not acquired. However, skills in the electronic brain are ‘Apps’, and can be deleted and new ones installed. Skill apps are bought using book 8 prices for skills. Also note that Apps are generally a limited porqtion of a skill; a Droid with Electronics-2 can figure out why your Comm is broken and repair it. A Bot with Electronics-2 has no debugging skills, but if you tell it set up your computer based on the instruction sheet, it can plug everything in for you
- Players whose character has Programming skill can write pseudo code to call skills in sequence, or make longer routines. If you’ve ever used Google Home’s Routines, or the Tasker app on Android phones, you’re seeing the limits here. A Bot can have as many routines as the C4 score. The GM will be the one to interpret the code when it’s run, so it is strongly suggested to keep it simple. (Popcorn Routine: Go to the microwave. On the counter, find box marked “popcorn”. Get one packet from the box. Remove wrapper from packet, making new objects wrapper and bag. Trash wrapper. Open microwave door. Put bag in microwave, with ‘this side up’ visible. Close microwave door . Press ‘popcorn’ button on microwave. Wait 84 seconds. Open microwave door. Get bag. Close microwave door. Come to me….”Helperbot, make popcorn.” “Running programed routine ‘popcorn’”) (The GM gets to enjoy the day the microwave is broken, and Helperbot brings an unpopped bag.)
