Cooperative R&D: Ant Labor Droid
Name: Ant Labor DroidDesigner: Roche Company, ThinkTank Dynamics
Manufacturers: Roche Company, Cestus Cybernetics, other Coalition affiliate companies
Role: group labor droid
Height: 2 meters
The Ant Labor Droid has been developed in response to continuing construction programs on the part of the Galactic Coalition, and is a prime example of multi-species cooperation in order to bring about a superior product. While the Vratix engineers at Roche company have something of an unfortunate history of accidentally producing droid models too “insectoid” in appearance and programming to be accepted by the more generalized humanoid populations of the galaxy, ThinkTank Dynamics has been tasked with just that: the creation of an insectoid labor droid.
Working closely with X'Ting and Vratix engineers, ThinkTank has created the perfect computational analogue to the insect hive brain, and coupled with a new droid labor shell produced by Roche specifically for the AI, the two companies are proud to present the Ant Labor Droid. Fully two meters in upright position, the Ant spends the majority of its time on six or four legs, using a combination of upper legs and head-mounted manipulator arms to move and operate machinery.
Two antennae serve as complex communications arrays, transmitting and receiving any number of comm data bursts in order to coordinate with other droids of the same type, or (when possible) even droids of different models. While equipped with vocoders which can adequately approximate humanoid speech, these are used only when addressing organic workers directly, something the Ant droid rarely does.
The Ant Labor Droid is the first droid to be equipped with a commercial adaptation of the Salvation System, renamed the Hive System for this application (for obvious reasons). This complex communications and organization system serves to arrange available Ant Labor Droids belonging to the same work detail according to methods patterned after actual insectoid hives, maximizing efficiency and streamlining communications.
The Ant Labor Droid's most effective tool, however, is itself. Modeled almost exactly after the proverbial ant, these droids have a comparable size/weight/strength ratio, and are designed to work as a unit. For example, Ants have been shown experimentally to build “chains” out of their own bodies to form a shortcut from a relatively high place to the ground, interlocking their arms and crawling over one another to reach from ceiling to floor, or from the edge of a broken bridge to a river bed some meters below. Similarly, but perhaps less complexly, large groups of Ants easily coordinate to move objects much too massive for small groups of them, and when ordered according to sufficiently urgent circumstances (such as the construction of a planetary defense turbolaser in preparation for a mock orbital attack), individual Ants are more than willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the project, constructing sections of structure which have no exit from inside, for example.
This particular model has already seen substantial real-world testing, preliminary product lines being donated to the Cooperative Workers' Party for use in a variety of circumstances, including starship loading/unloading, factory construction, farming, and zero-atmosphere starship construction.
The Ant Labor Droid is one of the most effective and complete adaptations of insectoid technology for general use, and will mark a new age in efficiency and utility on the labor front not expected to be surpassed for quite some time.
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