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"There's a poetry in the materials we use to construct our world of artifacts; it speaks of our long history as a technological species."
- William Gibson
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| Robot Bird | ||
| A small winged UAV that can mimic a bird in flight. |
When you're a Stinker, and other people can't stand to be around you, the company of intelligent robotic birds with excellent voice recognition abilities and conversational skills can be a blessing.
| He ruffled his plastic feathers. "I have calculated... that the retentive capacity of my memory is now restricted to a mere 70,000 additional words - how about fixing me up with two more retentive banks?"
...Craig smiled faintly. "As soon as possible and that's a promise." Gun extended one wing, examined his feathers and said: "Many thanks." When he had first built them, they had been crude indeed, flying mechanisms with little more than a reflex-response unit. Over the years, however, he had given them life and intelligence... They had developed into personalities and provided stimulating companions in his isolation. He had given them free-decision, apart from their business as bodyguards and all three had total recall. Gun, the golden eagle, was a compulsive reader... Recky, the first of the two kestrals, was apt to become lost in classical music while Screen, the second one, was literally working his way through college in a variety of abstract subjects. |
| Technovelgy from Invader on My Back,
by Philip E. High. Published by Ace Books in 1968 Additional resources -
|
Here's a typical sample of Gun's interaction with Craig's enemies:
"- what kind of bird flies at ninety-seven thousand feet for God's sake?"
High above, Gun folded his wings and dropped like a stone. As he dropped his body vibrated oddly and things happened to the ship below him. Sparks danced on its back and where the sparks danced, the surface opened jaggedly spraying smoke and fragments...
Compare to the bird-like robots from Flamingo (1930) by CE Heller and the metal birds from Vulcan's Hammer (1960), by Philip K. Dick.
The operator gave it magnification. "Okay, it's a bird, yeah a bird, small eagle or something."
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Invader on My Back
More Ideas
and Technology by Philip E. High
Tech news articles related to Invader on My Back
Tech news articles related to works by Philip E. High
Robot Bird-related
news articles:
- Robocopter Listens And Obeys
- Robot Bird Alights On Human Hand
- SHEPHERD-MIL, A Birdlike Soaring UAV
- Robo-Raven Flapping Wing Robot Bird
- Birds Aren't Real - Wake Up, California! (With Bird Watching Guide)
- Flying Robot Inspired By Hawks
- Robotic Crow Design, Like Crows, Is A Bit Creepy
| 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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'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...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
