Security/Combat Bots

Inigo Montoya's picture
Inigo Montoya
April 17, 2010 - 5:38pm

I think I'll lump these two together just for the sake of forum discussion. Ideas and comments regarding either Security and/or Combat robots should be made here.

Comments:

Inigo Montoya's picture
Inigo Montoya
April 17, 2010 - 6:08pm
I suppose if I could some up the main source of my unhappiness with robots in SF, it is that form does not follow function. Many of the security and combat bots are anthropomorphic. They look cool in pictures but are not very practical. There are a slew of images out there of currently used or developed robots look nothing like C3PO or a Cylon. I’ll see if I can’t figure out how to share some images.Several companies are developing security/combat robots that are little more than a machinegun mounted on tracks with a camera attached. Imagine a small bot consisting of 4 wheels that quickly and quietly move a cluster of 6 tubes that can pivot and aim. This entire device is two feet tall. Those tubes each carry one tangler grenade. The security bot can find intruders using its IR optics, motion detector, and even acoustics detector. Once the intruder has been located, it is identified as “friend” or “foe”. Approved personnel would entered into a database with facial recognition software (not sure how that works for doughy drals) or even voice recognition. Another “friend” determination would go for things such as mice, cats, really large roaches, etc,. The security bot has the option of firing a single shot from a mortar tube or it can unload all 6 at once. The program parameters for firing would be set based on something like size of target (more tanglers for large target or a close group of targets) or the intense value of the object guarded. The same version can be used as a combat robot simply by altering it’s mission and functions and arming it with more volatile grenades.

jedion357's picture
jedion357
April 17, 2010 - 6:55pm
Your evauluation is true enough but in the future it may be that asthetics and other values drive robot design for the sake of the comfort of biological units.

None the less...
Heres a scratch built job I did he's mounted on a 1.5 inch fender washer for a base. Body is not glued in, it rotates 360 and is removable (I planned for swap out bodies to change the robot's configuration but moved on to other projects) The head is actually 2 shoulder pads/armor bits from some Warhammer 40K space marines glued together as a cone- kind of has a retro 50's ish look.

one of my favorite miniatures.

I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

Inigo Montoya's picture
Inigo Montoya
April 17, 2010 - 7:43pm
Nice. Would that be an anthropomorphic dral robot? I have wondered how the dral would represent themselves robotically.

jedion357's picture
jedion357
April 17, 2010 - 8:11pm
Inigo Montoya wrote:
Nice. Would that be an anthropomorphic dral robot? I have wondered how the dral would represent themselves robotically.


Yes that was left un-answered in the rules

Purhaps they developed a system of small little chambers/sacks that could be pumped to higher pressure with a robotic brain to control the whole scheme it could minic the look and feel of a dral but without the flexibility of the dral.

EDIT: maybe what's needed is a none humanoid shaped body and none heavy duty body for more creativity
As it is if you want a SF robot that doesn't look humanoid then it has to be a heavy duty robot.

Take the tracked chassis In my pics. It would make a good alternative robot body without being heavy duty
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

Inigo Montoya's picture
Inigo Montoya
April 18, 2010 - 6:11am
I thought that the "standard" robot body did not have to be human shaped, it was just human sized. (Apparently nano-tech was not well known or conceived in the 80's. I personally like the the small droids like on farscape for instance.)

I aways assume vrusks had robots in their own likeness. I also assumed that generic 'human shaped' robots would pass as yazirian robots as well. It would take a higher level of detail to distinguish them. Thus the cheaper, general purpose bots would be indistinguishable between the two races.

I wondered last week what an edestekai or an ul-mor bot may look like if they ever reached that level of technology.

JCab747's picture
JCab747
August 24, 2016 - 4:55pm
Inigo Montoya wrote:
I thought that the "standard" robot body did not have to be human shaped, it was just human sized. (Apparently nano-tech was not well known or conceived in the 80's. I personally like the the small droids like on farscape for instance.)

I aways assume vrusks had robots in their own likeness. I also assumed that generic 'human shaped' robots would pass as yazirian robots as well. It would take a higher level of detail to distinguish them. Thus the cheaper, general purpose bots would be indistinguishable between the two races.

I wondered last week what an edestekai or an ul-mor bot may look like if they ever reached that level of technology.


Yes, I did not try to tap into nano technology though I did include some smaller robot sizes, plus the light body style had already been introduced in a Frontier Explorer magazine by the time I wrote my story.
Joe Cabadas