Here's a video that provides a bit more information:
As Technovelgy readers know, I love the idea of helpful advanced (sometimes alien) races helping out other beings. Vernor Vinge wrote about a strange race in his 1992 novel A Fire Upon the Deep, a plant-like species given mobility by a race gifted in the use of robotics:
Ravna looked across the surf. When the waves backed down the sand, she could see the Skroderiders' fronds peeping out of the spray... They sat in the surf, thinking thoughts that left no imprint on their minds...
Then some unknown race had chanced upon the dreamers and decided to "help them out." Someone had put them on mobile platforms, the skrodes. With wheels they could move along the seashores, could reach and manipulate with their fronds and tendrils. With the skrode's mechanical short-term memory, they could learn fast enough that their new mobility would not kill them...
Would you read more stories like this, if you could only find them? Sure you would.
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
Tumblin' Tumbleweed Rovers To Eplore Mars
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'