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"I kind of take it for granted that our great-grandchildren will regard us as a sort of precursor species. That they won't think of us as human and if we could see them, we probably wouldn't think of them as human either."
- William Gibson
 |
| 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
| Mori3 Autonomous Shapeshifting Robot |
| Tesla Seeks 'Tesla Robotaxi' And 'Robobus' Trademarks Ignoring Prior Art |
| Scary Grid Safety Robots |
| Humanoid Boxing Robot KO's Opponent - It's A Knockout! |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
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'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
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'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
