Occurs to me I toss out words, like Protectron, Mr Gutsy, and expect the Players to have images in mind. This thread corrects that.
ROBOTS
Talking about robots, one would be remiss to not talk about RobCo, the premiere innovator in digital computers and robotics. Every House of Tomorrow has a RobCo control system at it's beating heart, even if other components might be from competing companies. RobCo was the leading supplier of robots in civilian, government, and defense contracts, despite their limitations, especially after the terrible showing of General Atomics Gen 1 and Gen 2 Robobrains, however the stability of the Gen 3s might just take RobCo's coveted military contracts away.
RobCo Industries
Protectrons
Originally for the military, RobCo envisioned the the Assaultrons taking the place of soldiers; obedient, durable, and able to utilize extant military weaponry. Unfortunately RobCo had no idea what made up soldiers duties and Assaultrons were simply too clumsy, slow, and simple to ever replace trained soldiers. Though they did see plenty of use in foreign markets as heavy weapons 'platforms' for smaller armies, and as 'guardbots' for Warlords. It was the use as guardbots that gave RobCo the idea to rebrand the Assaultrons into the Protectrons. Reprogrammed for a variety of simple but dangerous jobs, Protectrons started taking the place of humans or even simply assisting humans in very dangerous jobs, police work doing ticket duty or standing guard, as no-skill corporate security, in the fire department to help clear burning buildings, in hazardous plants, sewage plants, and garbage pickup. The jobs a Protectron could perform alone were very limited, but with a human to guide or coach it, or to do the delicate work themselves, a Protectron is an assest. These days one or two Protectrons can be found at almost every dangerous job site.
Securtrons
RobCo learned from it's mistakes. Following the disaster of the Protectron in military roles, RobCo studied what the military needed and prototyped the Securtron. Not even pitched to the military, instead pitched to high security facilities, where intruders could face death, as Securtrons are essentially mobile weapons platforms. Of course they were initially only contracted to a handful of top-secret research facilities where top military brass were sure to catch glimpses and grow curious. This lead to requests for demonstrations which lead to those coveted defense contracts that actually brought RobCo into the black and gave them capital needed to really begin honing the cutting edge into microprocessing.
However it would be decades before this research bore fruit and brought the final two RobCo designs to the market.
General Atomics International
Where RobCo builds robots that are simple, and maybe clumsy, RobCo bots tend to be stable and error free. General Atomics on the other hand has a slightly colourful history, but what they may not measure up in 'stability', they measure up in power and versatility. RobCo bots are charger queens, where due to the acquisition of Telsa Industries in the early '40s, Gemeral Atomics had a leg up on other companies when the energy crisis began. Tesla had been trying to crack atomics on a consumer scale for 30 years, and the acquisition by the vaguely defense-backed GAI gave them access and capital they needed to finally solve that problem.
Mr Handy/Mr Gutsy
The original General Atomics robot, Mr Handy was a simple household assistant, with three arms and interchangeable attachments, was programmed to cook, clean, and perform household repairs. What made it so versatile? It was remote controlled by a much larger robot control station, which housed the actual computer brain for the Mr Handy. This was fine for larger homes and even job sites, as Mr Handy hovered using advanced magnetic repulsion and ducted air jets, it gave the robot unparalleled mobility. The military had no use for a bot with that large of a control space requirement, so General Atomics bagan experimenting on wet-wired neural-nets. These showed promise, bringing the control suite down in size, but increasing it's complexity and making it more prone to "error creep". Since wet-wired neural nets learned in an asymmetric fashion, it was far harder to track down problems ahead of time. But regardless, with Mr Gusty having a fusion core and a control suite small enough a dozen could be fit on an APC, they became a very useful choice in military operations. Usually deployed alongside the simpler but stabler RobCo Securtrons a Mr Gusty was almost smart enough to lead a squad. Many Mr Gustys would end up sporting sparkling butter-bars, suggesting the soldiers serving alongside them found them at least as intelligent as a freshly minted Lieutenant.
Mr Handy, the civilian model of the Mr Gutsy never got the wet-wired neural nets and remained much more stable, but less size friendly. They were only an attractive option if 'hover' and 'doesn't recharge' were highly important to your robot needs.
Robobrain
Robobrains are the pinnacle in processing power and flexibility. Fully wetware neural nets, using clone chimpanzee brain matter grown into a full-sized chimp brain, they can learn and process at the theoretical speed of a human or at least that what the advertising materials claim. In practice the Gen 1s were slow and prone to developing weird quirks and needing 'personality purges' frequently to keep them from developing truly disastrous 'programming issues' (everyone has heard the story abotu a Robo going berserk and something terrible or freaky). The Gen 2s were actually rumored to go psychotic, and we only used for a limited time publicly. However both General Atomics and Vault-Tec, the primary purchaser of Robobrains for their Vault construction and security forces, deny these rumors. It is a verifiable fact that since GAI rolled out the Gen 3 Robobrians Vault-Tec has made a public show of having Robobrians on staff in non-independent thinking rolls and the military has experimented with them as Squad Support and in highly dangerous missions.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:49, Sat 23 July 2022.
