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"A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Asteroid Mining Robot | ||
| An autonomous robot able to effectively mine asteroids. |
The DV-5 mining robot is of an unusual variety; it is a multiple robot. It has six robots working for it.
It is also able to work autonomously: "... these robots are equipped for asteroid mining without supervision."
| It was not overmassive by any means, in spite of its construction as thinking-unit of an integrated seven-member robot team. It was seven feet tall, and a half-ton of metal and electricity. A lot? Not when that half-ton has to be a mass of condensers, circuits, relays, and vacuum cells that can handle practically any psychological reaction known to humans...
 (Asteroid Mining Robot from 'Catch that Rabbit' by Isaac Asimov) "Dave," [Powell] said. "You're a stable, rock-bottom mining robot, except that you're equiped to handle six subsidiaries in direct coordination..." |
| Technovelgy from Catch That Rabbit,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1944 Additional resources -
|
The company that produced these robots was rather uncompromising; their unwritten motto was "No employee makes the same mistake twice. He is fired the first time."
Each robot is carefully tested:
Compare to asteroid mining from Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898) by Garrett P. Serviss,
asteroid mining (blasting) from Asteroid of Gold (1932) by Clifford Simak, the
meteor miner from Salvage in Space (1933) by Jack Williamson,
asteroid claim law from Jurisdiction (1941) by Nat Schachner,
space placers from The Day We Celebrate (1941) by Nelson S. Bond, the
asteroid mine from Love Among the Robots (1946) by Emmett McDowell, the coal mole from The Web Between the Worlds (1979) by Charles Sheffield, and
asteroid metal from The Mechanical Monarch (1958) by E.C. Tubb.
It started simply enough. Robot DV-5 multiplied five-place figures to the heartless ticking of a stop watch. He recited the prime numbers between a thousand and ten-thousand. He extracted cube roots and integrated functions of varying complexity. He went through mechanical reactions in order of increasing difficulty. And, finally, worked his precise mechanical mind over the highest function of the robot world — the solution of problems in judgment and ethics.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Catch That Rabbit
More Ideas
and Technology by Isaac Asimov
Tech news articles related to Catch That Rabbit
Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov
Asteroid Mining Robot-related
news articles:
- Robots In The Mines
- NASA's Robotic Mining Competition
| Tactile Skin Supplier Map |
| Robot Bees 3D Printed By Festo |
| DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It |
| How To Settle An Argument Between Two Robots |
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'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
