Excerpt from Robopocalypse
Twenty minute after the war ends , I ’m look out stumpers pour up out of a flash-frozen hole in the ground like ants from hell and implore that I keep my natural leg for another sidereal day .
Each walnut tree - sized robot is misplace in the admixture as they rise over each other and the whole nightmare jumble of legs and antennae blend together into one roll homicidal bulk .
With benumbed fingers , I fumble my goggles down over my eyes and get quick to do some business with my small acquaintance Rob , here .
It ’s an queerly unruffled forenoon . Just the sigh of the wind through arrant tree branches and the hoarse whisper of a hundred - thousand explosive mechanical hexapod searching for human dupe . Up above , snow goose honk to each other as they glide over the frigid Alaskan landscape .
The war is over . It ’s time to see what we can find .
From where I ’m stand ten yards away from the gob , the sea wolf machine look almost beautiful in the dawn , like candy spilled out onto the permafrost .
I squint into the sunshine , my hint billowing out in pale puffs , and sling my battered old flamethrower off my shoulder . With one gloved thumb , I depress the ignite push .
Spark .
The ceramist does n’t unhorse .
ask to warm up , so to speak . But they ’re getting close . No sweat . I ’ve done this lashings of times . The antic is to be serene and methodical , just like them . Rob must ’ve rubbed off on me after the first brace years .
Now I see the individual stumpers . A maze of briary legs attached to a bifurcated shell . I bed from experience that each side of the shell arrest a dissimilar fluid . The grain and passion of human skin broach a trigger - commonwealth . The fluids combine . POP ! Somebody gain a brand new stump .
They do n’t know I ’m here . But the Scout are spreading out in semi - random patterns based on Big Rob ’s subject field of scrounge ants . The robots learn so much about us , about nature .
It wo n’t be long now .
I begin to back away slowly .
“ C’m on , you bastard , ” I croak .
That was a mistake : to talk . The heat from my breath is like a beacon . The flowage of horror surge my style , tranquil and tight .
A lead stumper climbs onto my boot . Got ta be careful now . Ca n’t react . If it pops I ’m minus a foot , best sheath .
I should never have arrive here alone .
Now the photoflood is at my invertebrate foot . I feel a jerk on my frost - covered shin - guard as the loss leader climbs me like a heap . Metal - filament aerial water tap , tap , tap along , questing for the tell - tale heat energy of human flesh .
Oh Christ . C’m on , c’m on , c’m on .
There ’s hold out to be a temperature differential at my waist degree , where the armor check . A trunk - grade gun trigger - land in body armor is n’t a death sentence , but it does n’t look good for my balls , either .
Spark . Whoomph !
I ’m lit .
write Realistic Robots
My goal for Robopocalypse is to portray a terrific , hyper - naturalistic future in which our familiar technology has run amuck and then evolved . Toward that ending , I find out brainchild and guidance by pull on actual - world robotics inquiry .
I ’m not taste to sound like a pretentious hindquarters hat by read that a mass of substantial robotics research belong into my penning . I agree that skill fiction is full of not bad , realistic robots that came directly from the imagination . All I ’m say is that my own originative unconscious process was to build up on existing research so as to provide foundation for the dozens of unequalled robots that undercover agent , stalk , and fight through the Robopocalypse .
Here ’s a coup d’oeil of that physical process . The following is a breakdown of the decision that operate into the creation of “ stumper , ” those nasty footling bugs you just read about .
Overview
The “ toughie ” is a crawling landmine . It is described as an worm - like , walnut - sized hexapod with filament feeler and a bifurcated shell . poser typically hide themselves in cold environments and emerge in swarms upon detecting strong , bipedally - walking targets . Upon reach a skin - temperature induction - state , the stumpers self - detonate to annihilative burden ( hence the name ) .
Robotic Platform
The sticker is designed to injure and terrify human beings over a all-embracing range of hostile outdoor environments for very little cost . The intelligence of a stumper is build into its pattern , which is complex , and not its behavior , which is childlike .
Hardware
toughie are mass - produced from cheap materials . The consistency of each stumper is fashion out of a few pieces of stiff textile , similar to the biomimetic hexapod “ cockroaches ” built by Bob Full ’s POLY - PEDAL Lab at U.C. Berkeley [ 1 ] . This creates a robust weapons platform that can locomote over varied terrain , resist crushing forces from being air - drop into activeness , and squander minimum free energy ( all important for a equipment that may wait for years before springing into action ) .
sensor
Detecting eubstance heat is accomplished via modified passive infrared detector ( PIRs ) . Gait recognition is fulfill via fibril transmitting aerial attached to mike that have been gated for desire vibrational frequencies .
Detonation mechanics
Upon detecting a skin - temperature trigger - state , a stumper self - detonates by releasing stored current from a capacitance , vaporizing a telegram “ plug ” that separates two liquids , which then explode on contact . My inspiration came from observing the fail - safe mechanism used by independent underwater fomite . Upon ruinous implosion therapy , a chaw dissolve in the salt water , releasing emergency light ballast and surface the vehicle [ 2 ] .
Behavior
poser operate in structurally homogeneous swarm with very behavioural strategies . ego - constitution arises as each stumper obey simple local rules , similar to angle schooling or birds flocking [ 3 ] . For example , each robot outride a sure distance from the others while butt seeking . The result is an emergent demeanor in which stumpers menstruate around obstacles and surround quarry . This decentralized approach is responsive and requires no active communicating ; it minimizes processing by map sensorial selective information directly to action ; and it postulate no leader or central control [ 4 ] . The deprivation of an individual stumper causes no disruption to the behaviour of the swarm .
position
Limited numbers of stumpers must mete out themselves to maximise the probability of human tangency . Distribution of a living minefield take only local communicating , as shown by researchers on the “ Self - healing Minefield ” undertaking [ 5 ] . Through passive communication , each stumper keeps a set distance from its neighbors , lead in tunable placement over a given area .
Target - seeking
The systematic exploration of an area for imagination by non - communicating agents falls under the umbrella of a “ scrounge problem . ” Ant species have develop numerous effective answer which have been retroflex in autonomous multirobot systems . Typically , these solutions leave in randomize fractal paths spreading outward from a primal focal point [ 6 ] . In addition , using body heat to find human targets is a common “ hunt and saving ” problem for robots designed to maneuver in disaster zones [ 7 ] , including snake robot designed by the Biorobotics Laboratory at CMU [ 8 ] .
Communication
inactive communicating between the robots is accomplished using vibration detection . While in motion , stumpers mother a quiver tailored for easy recognition by nearby comrades . This form of vibrational communication is modeled on mating crickets , who emit oftenness that are strong enough to maximize range , yet stealthy enough to minimise the scourge of predation [ 9 ] .
Summary
And that ’s a abbreviated overview of the variety of conclusion that go into creating realistic robots for Robopocalypse . as luck would have it for the reader , very few of these details explicitly make it into the book . However , this floor of realism is in my head as I write . Just proof that no matter how boring they seem , expert paper and research presentations can do marvel for the imagery .
Citations
[ 1 ] Dudek , D. M. and R. J. Full . 2006 . “ Passive Mechanical Properties of Legs from Running Insects , ” Journal of Experimental Biology , v. 209 , pp . 1502 - 1515 .
[ 2 ] Proenza , J. , Ortiz , A. , Bernat , G. , Oliver , G. 1999 . “ A Cost - in force Hardware Architecture for Fail - good Autonomous Underwater Vehicles , ” The sixth IEEE International Conference on Electronics , Circuits and Systems , Pafos , Cyprus , pp . 1487 - 1490 .
[ 3 ] Hackwood , S. and Beni , S. 1992 . “ Self - organization of Sensors for Swarm Intelligence , ” 1992 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation , Nice , France , pp . 819 - 829 .
[ 4 ] Balch , T. and Arkin , R.C. 1998 . “ Behavior - Based Formation Control for Multiagent Robot Teams , ” IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation .
[ 5 ] Rolader , G.E. , Rogers , J. and Batteh , J. 2004 . “ ego - healing minefield ” , Proceedings of SPIE , v. 5441 , pp . 13 , doi:10.1117/12.547923
[ 7 ] Markov , S. and Birk , A. 2007 . “ Detecting Humans in 2D Thermal Images by Generating 3D framework , ” Advances in Artificial Intelligence , ed . Hertzberg , J. , Beetz , M. and Englert , R. Springer - Berlin , v. 4667 , pp . 293 - 307 , doi:10.1007/978 - 3 - 540 - 74565 - 5_23
[ 8 ] Wolf , A. , Choset , H. M. , Brown , H. B. , and Casciola , R. 2005 . “ Design and Control of a Mobile Hyper - Redundant Urban Search and Rescue Robot , ” International Journal of Advanced Robotics , v. 19 ( 8) , pp.221 - 248 .
[ 9 ] P. Hill . 2008 . Vibrational Communication in Animals . Harvard University Press .
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