Default Assumption: Do robots survive in a vacuum?

[Enoki]

Seems to me, if you are going to design a robot that does not need to breathe, you are going to design it for a number of commonly encountered environments which would include the vacuum of space. If a robot needed a spacesuit then that is one less spacesuit for a human being. You don't want a situation where a robot and a human need to fight over the last remaining spacesuit while the ship is venting atmosphere into space. Ingrid looks human from the outside, but her internals don't have to resemble a human at all. Most scanners would pick up that she is not human, unless Ingrid hacked into them and reprogrammed them to give a false reading that she is human, Ingrid has to be aware that such scanners exist, if she is caught by surprise then they detect her as she is.

Radiation protection would be more difficult to achieve. Ionizing radiation like gamma rays would require a fairly high level of shielding along with a means to bleed of the electrical charge as it accumulated. All of that is going to add bulk and weight to the robot.

Neutron radiation is a whole 'nother animal. Now you need something highly effective to absorb it and preferably something that doesn't turn radioactive as a result.

Both types would be present in open space, and the closer to the star or a world like a gas giant that creates some of its own, is going to make this an issue.

After all, robots used in nuclear accident clean up that weren't designed to work in a high radiation environment have failed pretty rapidly in use.

This would be hard to achieve in a human sized robot without sacrificing a good bit of internal space I'd think.

 

[Werner]

Radiation protection would be more difficult to achieve. Ionizing radiation like gamma rays would require a fairly high level of shielding along with a means to bleed of the electrical charge as it accumulated. All of that is going to add bulk and weight to the robot.

Neutron radiation is a whole 'nother animal. Now you need something highly effective to absorb it and preferably something that doesn't turn radioactive as a result.

Both types would be present in open space, and the closer to the star or a world like a gas giant that creates some of its own, is going to make this an issue.

After all, robots used in nuclear accident clean up that weren't designed to work in a high radiation environment have failed pretty rapidly in use.

This would be hard to achieve in a human sized robot without sacrificing a good bit of internal space I'd think.

The amount of radiation depends on where in space it happens to be. Mostly what the radiation does is flip random bits by changing 1s to 0s and 0s to 1s causing errors, by adding in redundancies and having multiple circuits performing the same calculations and multiple memory spaces storing the same data, you can have error correction schemes by sacrificing some processing power and memory spaces, but we're only simulating a human brain and the actual AI software is derived from the Virus itself which is destined to destroy interstellar civilization in Charted Space, it has found a way to spread through space in spite of the radiation hazard. The software running Ingrid is a cousin of the Virus, it has an immune system which could defeat that Virus, if only she was not sent to the Andromeda Galaxy inba one way jumpgate and the return jumpgate was not finished yet, by the time it is it will be in the middle of the New Era.. If the Virus ever gets to the Andromeda Galaxy by means of a Jumpgate Ingrid possesses the means to stop it in her software, the creators that created her also created the Virus.

I would say at tech level 16 a way has been found to harden circuits against radiation not through shielding so much as through error correction and a bit of self repair nanites built into the circuits, which is able to tolerate a certain amount of radiation, you wouldn't want to get too close to a star but for normal space the typical amount of radiation can be corrected for.

 

[mike wightman]

There is no neutron radiation in open space...

for neutron radiation you need a neutron emitter and you have to be within (neutron velocity/900 seconds) of it.

 

[AtlanticFriend]

This is one of those assumptions about not being in a vacuum that cause massive damage. Thermal sensors may or may not work the same way when exposed to vacuum. And if it fails to work as expected the cascade may cause other problems, like a melt down.

Also, wouldn't any internal fluid used by the robot expose it to decompression?

 

[mike wightman]

Simple economics - which is cheaper:

a robot built to survive on the off chance it is exposed to vacuum

a robot not built to vacuum survival situations shoved in a vacc suit

 

[AtlanticFriend]

Simple economics - which is cheaper:

a robot built to survive on the off chance it is exposed to vacuum

a robot not built to vacuum survival situations shoved in a vacc suit

Yep, that nails it. A human-shaped robot can use all easily-available human equipment. Occam's razor leans toward spending the money (as well as ithe robot's mass, unless everybody's fine with Ingrid having the weight and aspect of a compact car) on the robot's learning/manipulating abilities and not on giving it modules mimicking existant equipment such as vacc suits, personal armor, long-range radios, etc.

 

[Werner]

Simple economics - which is cheaper:

a robot built to survive on the off chance it is exposed to vacuum

a robot not built to vacuum survival situations shoved in a vacc suit

It's not an off chance in a setting set in space, and needing a space suit is a serious disadvantage, plus space suits don't protect from radiation, they provide air pressure and atmosphere for a creature that needs to breathe and is wasted on something that does not. Also spacesuits limit mobility to the point where a character needs a skill in vacc suit in order to use them without penalty. A robot that does not need to breathe does not need a vacc suit skill because it does not need a vacc suit, and vacc suits are all that cheap either. Might as well build in the capability to operate in space than build a robot that needs a vacc suit. NASA doesn't build robots that need space suits, and if it turns out that she needs to be denser to operate in a vacuum, then so be it, I would give her the built in armor of a vacc suit as well to, though I think her artificial skin might be on the outside of that armor, so it will get damaged and she is not going to look pretty if she gets hit.

 

[Werner]

Yep, that nails it. A human-shaped robot can use all easily-available human equipment. Occam's razor leans toward spending the money (as well as it mass, unless everybody's fine with Ingrid having the weight and aspect of a compact car) on the robot's learning/manipulating abilities and not on giving it modules mimicking existant equipment such as vacc suits, personal armor, long-range radios, etc.

Radios aren't that bulky, I would give her the capacity of a suit radio, she would also have a built in cell phone, if a cell phone can fit in you pocket, there is not reason not to have one built into her. Whatever armor is built into her is going to be light armor, if she wants to go with heavy armor, she could just upload her program to a battle robot instead, it would have to be a robot equipped with a brain identical to her own, otherwise it couldn't run her program, she can infect other equipment with a virus, but most equipment doesn't have the right architecture to fully run her program. She can infect a Starship computer and take over the Starship, but this just slaves the Starship to her will, she still needs to reside in a positronic brain, what she infects the starship with is just a subroutine that allows her to control it.

 

[AtlanticFriend]

Radios aren't that bulky, I would give her the capacity of a suit radio, she would also have a built in cell phone, if a cell phone can fit in you pocket, there is not reason not to have one built into her. Whatever armor is built into her is going to be light armor, if she wants to go with heavy armor, she could just upload her program to a battle robot instead, it would have to be a robot equipped with a brain identical to her own, otherwise it couldn't run her program, she can infect other equipment with a virus, but most equipment doesn't have the right architecture to fully run her program. She can infect a Starship computer and take over the Starship, but this just slaves the Starship to her will, she still needs to reside in a positronic brain, what she infects the starship with is just a subroutine that allows her to control it.

Sure, but consider all the equipment you'll need to integrate: advanced comm, armor, reinforced artificial lungs and vocal cords, power source, computer, articulated limbs, some biotech for keeping the outer skin alive, radiation shielding, maybe some internal weapon/defense system, connections with outside machines.. all the while having to look and weigh like a normal human.

It's an engineering issue: even with advanced tech there's only so much you can cram into a human-sized frame (both in terms of size and weight), particularly since there's not much you can take "out" of a human organism to make room for minimum robotic components (obviously the digestive system, but if Ingrid is supposed to behave like a human close enough her robotic nature doesn't show you'll still need some mechanism to ingest, store and dispose of whatever she ingests for the sake of camouflage). The lungs and vocal cords you could get rid of, freeing the whole ribcage, but at the cost or her voice being (and sounding) artificial.

Since her human appearance seems key to the design, why not gain space and mass by "outsourcing" some of the functions to already available human equipment which she'll be able to use easily (and which will reinforce her human-like aspect)? Your example of the cell phone is quite good, but I'll put it this way : since cellphones aren't that bulky and are ubiquitous, why bother implant one in your body? Sounds simpler to wear clothes and put the phone in a pocket, and this way when the new 50-G Imperialphone hits the stores across the Imperium, Ingrid will be able to use it instantly instead of having to undergo maintenance.

 

[mike wightman]

It's not an off chance in a setting set in space, and needing a space suit is a serious disadvantage, plus space suits don't protect from radiation, they provide air pressure and atmosphere for a creature that needs to breathe and is wasted on something that does not.

Why are all the sophonts not bioengineered for vacuum survival then? Because it is cheaper to just give them vacc suits for the odd occasion they have to be exposed to space without a ship between them and the vacuum.
Oh, and space suits do protect against some radiation...

Might as well build in the capability to operate in space than build a robot that needs a vacc suit.

Only if it is cost effective to do so, if it is cheaper and you get the same capability from putting your robot in a vacc suit then that's what you do.
Funny how you use modern day space suit limitations for a TL16 robot - wouldn't a TL16 vacc suit be available?

NASA doesn't build robots that need space suits,

And they cost a very great deal of money as a result.

 

[robject]

Use T5 to design and buy a robot, using your PC's savings.

In order to get the most from your money, you will optimize that sucker to the hilt. You'll only buy what you know you'll need, and typically forego bits that you don't. If you're designing an R2 unit that does outer hull repairs in a vacuum, then it will hold interior pressure in its outer skin.

If it lives in your ship with you, it might not be worth it... unless you have spare cash floating around. And yes, some do have spare cash floating around. And some are leveraged and looking for optima.

Both are okay. Bottom line, though: robot design should be a tradeoff based on mission, just like our starships.

 

[Werner]

Also, wouldn't any internal fluid used by the robot expose it to decompression?

Depends on what kind of fluid it is, some types of fluid can exist in a vacuum, one example is mercury. The fluid a robot uses is most likely hydraulic fluid, robot muscles work the opposite from human muscles, human muscles contract, while robot muscles depend on hydraulic compression, though other types of artificial muscles exist which do the opposite, and also there are electric motors as well. If hydraulic fluid gets exposed to the vacuum, then that means there was a hydraulic fluid leak, and the robot would be in trouble regardless of whether it was in a vacuum or not, but those hydraulic fluids work by being under pressure, exposing it to a vacuum just means it would need less internal pressure relative to the outside pressure, hydraulic hoses need to deal with a lot of internal pressure anyway. Human blood is not used for hydraulics, so its containment is not as strong as for hydraulic hoses.

 

[Werner]

Sure, but consider all the equipment you'll need to integrate: advanced comm, armor, reinforced artificial lungs and vocal cords, power source, computer, articulated limbs, some biotech for keeping the outer skin alive, radiation shielding, maybe some internal weapon/defense system, connections with outside machines.. all the while having to look and weigh like a normal human.

It's an engineering issue: even with advanced tech there's only so much you can cram into a human-sized frame (both in terms of size and weight), particularly since there's not much you can take "out" of a human organism to make room for minimum robotic components (obviously the digestive system, but if Ingrid is supposed to behave like a human close enough her robotic nature doesn't show you'll still need some mechanism to ingest, store and dispose of whatever she ingests for the sake of camouflage). The lungs and vocal cords you could get rid of, freeing the whole ribcage, but at the cost or her voice being (and sounding) artificial.

Since her human appearance seems key to the design, why not gain space and mass by "outsourcing" some of the functions to already available human equipment which she'll be able to use easily (and which will reinforce her human-like aspect)? Your example of the cell phone is quite good, but I'll put it this way : since cellphones aren't that bulky and are ubiquitous, why bother implant one in your body? Sounds simpler to wear clothes and put the phone in a pocket, and this way when the new 50-G Imperialphone hits the stores across the Imperium, Ingrid will be able to use it instantly instead of having to undergo maintenance.

Let's just say her internal cell phone is upgradeable, she has a compartment, where the can install the internals of a handheld cellphone into her body, and her eyes are cameras and her ears are microphones, even though they look like human eyes and ears, she can use her own sensory inputs in place of the phones, so she doesn't need the phone's screen, cameras microphone or speaker, her robot body has those features already, which reminds me, her voder is much more versatile than her vocal cords, she can speak with someone else's voice using her voder, and can make other sounds that humans can't, she could even allow herself to be used as a cellphone if she wants., the only thing she is lacking is a screen for others to see, she can use other screens that she can communicate with using her internal radio if she wants of course.

Ingrid looks like a human for her own benefit mostly, her mind is modeled electronically after a human, and she thinks of herself as a "she" rather than as an "it", because of that psychology when she looks down at herself, she wants to see a human body, it makes her feel more comfortable, though sometimes she inhabits a battle robot instead, she is more comfortable in her human body. The robot brain has to be designed to host her, she can't just inhabit any device, the devices she controls have to be in communications range of her, and she can hack into a Ship's computer and use that ship's more powerful radio too is she wants, but if the device is more than a couple light seconds away, she has trouble controlling it.

So technically, this is a PC level robot, it counts as a player character race, she looks human because she wants to, not that she is a spy or is pretending to be a human all the time, those that know her know what she really is, though she may pretend to be human, any decent sensor can determine her true nature unless she hacked into it before hand so it gives false reading.

By the way hacking into something is not an automatic success, it is a skill check, some things are easier to hack into that others, though she is a lot better than human hackers as she can do he computer hacking in real time, she can write hacking software and code on the fly as she is a machine herself, she doesn't need to move her fingers on a keyboard or even speak if she is using her radio.

 

[Enoki]

There is no neutron radiation in open space...

for neutron radiation you need a neutron emitter and you have to be within (neutron velocity/900 seconds) of it.

They are a problem. They decay in about 13 minutes but can travel hundreds of thousands of miles in that time before doing so (depending on speed).

NASA is concerned about them

https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/features/advanced_neutron.html

I'd say they're a concern here too. For example, orbiting a gas giant you might encounter them.

 

[Enoki]

I would say split the difference. Use of an environmental suit is necessary (less bulky than a vac suit, possibly without air supply (even less bulk), is necessary for protection and operation in space. If radiation is present, some sort of portable shield that can be deployed is used, just like it would have to be with humans.

 

[Werner]

I would say split the difference. Use of an environmental suit is necessary (less bulky than a vac suit, possibly without air supply (even less bulk), is necessary for protection and operation in space. If radiation is present, some sort of portable shield that can be deployed is used, just like it would have to be with humans.

Well the battle robot she sometimes inhabits, is better shielded than her Android body, it has legs and arms and is functionally equivalent to battledress armor and has some built in weapons as well. Another thing I should say is that when she uploads from one robot body to another, her software overwrites a prior version of her software the remained in the robot brain with the memories from the previous time she inhabited it, basically it gets updated to the latest version of her, when she leaves that robot body for her Android body, her software in the battle robot does not get deleted, the software in her Android body get updated to the latest version of her when she reinhabits it. Ingrid prefers not to have both versions of herself running at the same time, as she prefers not to be duplicated. If the robot with the latest running version of her gets destroyed, the robot version of her with the previous version may be booted up, it doesn't have her latest memories so there is a gap in her memories.

 

[Enoki]

How do you think she'd do if she ran into these folks?

https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Ginsharian

 

[AtlanticFriend]

Let's just say her internal cell phone is upgradeable, she has a compartment, where the can install the internals of a handheld cellphone into her body, and her eyes are cameras and her ears are microphones, even though they look like human eyes and ears, she can use her own sensory inputs in place of the phones, so she doesn't need the phone's screen, cameras microphone or speaker, her robot body has those features already, which reminds me, her voder is much more versatile than her vocal cords, she can speak with someone else's voice using her voder, and can make other sounds that humans can't, she could even allow herself to be used as a cellphone if she wants., the only thing she is lacking is a screen for others to see, she can use other screens that she can communicate with using her internal radio if she wants of course.

Ingrid looks like a human for her own benefit mostly, her mind is modeled electronically after a human, and she thinks of herself as a "she" rather than as an "it", because of that psychology when she looks down at herself, she wants to see a human body, it makes her feel more comfortable, though sometimes she inhabits a battle robot instead, she is more comfortable in her human body. The robot brain has to be designed to host her, she can't just inhabit any device, the devices she controls have to be in communications range of her, and she can hack into a Ship's computer and use that ship's more powerful radio too is she wants, but if the device is more than a couple light seconds away, she has trouble controlling it.

So technically, this is a PC level robot, it counts as a player character race, she looks human because she wants to, not that she is a spy or is pretending to be a human all the time, those that know her know what she really is, though she may pretend to be human, any decent sensor can determine her true nature unless she hacked into it before hand so it gives false reading.

By the way hacking into something is not an automatic success, it is a skill check, some things are easier to hack into that others, though she is a lot better than human hackers as she can do he computer hacking in real time, she can write hacking software and code on the fly as she is a machine herself, she doesn't need to move her fingers on a keyboard or even speak if she is using her radio.

Well, if her voder can fool people into thinking they're speaking with somebody else, probably she doesn't need the artificial vocal cords nor the lungs - and that gives you some much-needed free space and spare kilograms. And if she doesn't have to look 100% human (I was under the impression she absolutely had to pass for one, à la Ash.) then that gives you some leeway as well, as the outer skin might just be synthetic and not biological (for example).

As Robject suggested, try to build her with T5 rules to see the final mass when all Ingrid's options are included. If you end up above a reasonable weight, go for simple: if she is human-sized, having her wear armorr/vacc suit is simpler/cheaper/lighter than equipping her with an integrated one. The same goes for everything that would only mimics an existing piece of wearable/hand-held humanoid equipment (advanced long-range comm or sensors, weaponry, etc). This way you can focus Ingrid's design on her hacking function and versatile software.

 

[Werner]

Well, if her voder can fool people into thinking they're speaking with somebody else, probably she doesn't need the artificial vocal cords nor the lungs - and that gives you some much-needed free space and spare kilograms. And if she doesn't have to look 100% human (I was under the impression she absolutely had to pass for one, à la Ash.) then that gives you some leeway as well, as the outer skin might just be synthetic and not biological (for example).

As Robject suggested, try to build her with T5 rules to see the final mass when all Ingrid's options are included. If you end up above a reasonable weight, go for simple: if she is human-sized, having her wear armorr/vacc suit is simpler/cheaper/lighter than equipping her with an integrated one. The same goes for everything that would only mimics an existing piece of wearable/hand-held humanoid equipment (advanced long-range comm or sensors, weaponry, etc). This way you can focus Ingrid's design on her hacking function and versatile software.

Well it's kind of complicated, if she looks and acts like a human, then people leave her alone and don't pay her special attention, if she has a speaker instead of a mouth, people are going to pay attention because they will think she looks weird.

 

[Werner]

Well, if her voder can fool people into thinking they're speaking with somebody else, probably she doesn't need the artificial vocal cords nor the lungs - and that gives you some much-needed free space and spare kilograms. And if she doesn't have to look 100% human (I was under the impression she absolutely had to pass for one, à la Ash.) then that gives you some leeway as well, as the outer skin might just be synthetic and not biological (for example).

As Robject suggested, try to build her with T5 rules to see the final mass when all Ingrid's options are included. If you end up above a reasonable weight, go for simple: if she is human-sized, having her wear armorr/vacc suit is simpler/cheaper/lighter than equipping her with an integrated one. The same goes for everything that would only mimics an existing piece of wearable/hand-held humanoid equipment (advanced long-range comm or sensors, weaponry, etc). This way you can focus Ingrid's design on her hacking function and versatile software.

The robot would either be speaking without using its mouth or trying to lip synch, and most robots I've seen trying to do that do it poorly. I don't want something that looks like a plastic mannequin with a built-in speaker and a mouth opening and closing like a puppet.

I never knew vocal cords take up so much space, mine seem to fit in my throat just fine, and my cellphone fits in my pocket, I think I can have both. You seem to think everything is built with vacuum tubes. I think if her mind is electronic, then it could be connected to a radio easily enough, and not one from the 1940s, but the miniaturized ones we have today. I don't know a single instance where NASA built a robot and put it in a space suit to save money, none of the ones they sent to Mars were in space suits.

I don't much like the C3P0 look with a speaker for a mouth, and R2D2 looks like a mobile trash can on wheels, I think robots can look a bit more sophisticated than that. Ingrid would be classified as a social robot, that is one designed to interact with humans, so looking the part helps.