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"What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. This is quite something, to rent artificial friends and relatives right inside the house."
- Kurt Vonnegut
 |
| Roachster | ||
| A genetically-engineered vehicle based on arthropod DNA; uses implanted control structures. |
In this possible future (around 2044), most purely mechanical devices like cars, trucks and planes are replaced by enlarged organisms combined with implanted control devices.
| "...When General Bodies designed their Roachster, they had an immense advantage. An arthropod's shell is laid down by an underlying membrane and is periodically replaced or molted. Once they had gengineered their hybrid to ghrow bumps in suitable places, beneath the legs... then they could have the membrane secrete a second layer of shell inside those bumps, just within the first... The end result is a wheel mounted on a central hub. The genimal's legs run backward on top of the wheels...
"There's the brain, the spinal chord, the motor centers. A cable, here, from the controller to the interface plug... wires from that to the brain." She explained how the controller, a computer, translated movements of the tiller or control yoke and the throttle and brake pedals into electrical signals and routed them as appropriate to the jets or the genimal's motor centers, triggering the genimal's own nervous system into commanding its muscles to serve the driver. All the necessary programming was built into the hardware, burned into PROM chips like the one pictured in his glossy. "...A Roachster's plug is installed beneath the shell-secreting membrane, so molting will not effect it.
|
| From Sparrowhawk,
by Thomas A. Easton. Published by Ace Books in 1990 Additional resources -
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- Spy Moth Cyborg On/Off Switch Perfected
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| OnStar Stolen Vehicle Slowdown Foils Carjacker |
| iPhone App To Drive Your Car |
| AIDA Affective Intelligent Driving Agent |
| Autonomous Valet Parking By Volkswagen |
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Gerry was dubious. She had seen abortive attempts at paralysis rays before.
Let your fingers - uh - your robot do the walking. And hopping.
