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"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Robot Tracking Device | ||
| Small UAV robot remotely operated by an artificially intelligent computer. |
Vulcan 3, an underground self-modifying supercomputer, uses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to find out what's going on with the humans.
| On the chest of drawers something was perched. Something that gleamed, shiny metal, gleamed and clicked as it turned toward her. She saw into two glassy mechanical lenses, something with a tubelike body, the size of a child's bat, shot upward and swept toward her. |
| From Vulcan's Hammer,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Ace Books in 1960 Additional resources -
|
Take a look at what artists in 1960 thought a robot tracking device looked like in this first edition cover photo:
The same device attacked the leader of the resistance movement:
"...I found most of it." He triumphantly displayed a charred but still intact metal cylinder with an elaborate system of antennas, receptors and propulsion jets.
Here's what it feels like to live in this future society:
Madness, he thought. The ultimate horror for our paranoid culture; vicious unseen mechanical entities that flit at the edges of our vision, that can go anywhere, that are in our very midst. And there may be an unlimited number of them. One of them following each of us...
The existence of these devices is one demonstration of Vulcan 3's paranoia; ordinarily, it relied on countless human beings who provided it with information. Dick compares the provision of data to Vulcan 3 with slopping a hog - he refers to "data troughs."
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More Ideas
and Technology from Vulcan's Hammer
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and Technology by Philip K. Dick
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- Rolling Robot's Helicopter Transformation
- sFly UAVs Swarm Together For SAR
- EASE Surveillance Robot Hovering Near You
- Google's Project Wing Will Find You
- Flying Robot Has An Arm
- Prodrone Dual Arm Drone PD6B-AW-ARM As Predicted In 1960
| RFID Chipped Employees Of Three Square Market |
| SkEye Amazing Israeli Gigapixel Drone |
| Cyborg DragonflEye At Your Command |
| Bat Bot Robotic Flapping-Wing Drone |
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'Everyone was aware that the damned platform was wandering around in its own orbit...'
'In the crimson darkness, stewing warm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged with blood-surrogate and hormones...'
'They plop down on the Red and if the dust is deep enough ... they burrow in...'
Little robots cooperating can do big tasks. Eventually.
Ever wonder how you look when you enter a new part of a spacecraft?
