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A sketch from a recent Traveller game, of a Helper unit - a moderately advanced robot purchased for general labor, common around fancier starports or aboard starships that have a decent enough profit margin to pad out their crew rosters with a few of these working cargo. HELPERs are made by Corsican Robotics and Cybernetics Company (CRC) at Dade, pretty much the leading robotics manufacturer and innovator at the end of the Star Rim Trail.
They are of fairly basic intelligence with Command Algorithm 2, (Int 2 - just shy of being 'dumb-bots') and education (Edu 5 - mostly through an on board, basic encyclopedia), and have a minimal skill package (One or two skills to level 0). 30,400 Credits
Upgrades to Command Algorithm 3 (Int 5) and more extensive Encyclopedia (Edu 7), with 2 level 1 skills are possible, though this almost doubles the cost of the robot to 58,900 Credits
Both can take complicated commands, and respond to the best of their ability, but they're hardly going to be sparkling conversationalists.
The longer than 'natural' arms throw the robot into the uncanny valley territory intentionally, though some slight modification can be done to 'disguise' a Helper as a human when wearing heavy clothing.
CRC also makes a much more advanced SEAN model that is not only 2 tech levels higher and ten times as expensive, with fully autonomous learning capability, emotion sim, personality program, and high positronic/synaptic processing mesh but is built on nearly the same chassis as the HELPER, with shorter arms and more 'human-like' posture, and better servo sheathing, though it carries nearly the same style of head. (Int 7, Edu 13)
In the course of our game, several simple HELPER units turned out to be more advanced SEAN units heavily modded to resemble their simpler brethren, and were used for political and industrial espionage as well as covert action, as well as some using their presence as ship crew to function as drop boxes for intel on different worlds without their crew's knowledge.
As a silly side-note HELPER initially stood for:
Heuristic
Enhanced
Laborer
Programmed for
Efficient
Repair
They are of fairly basic intelligence with Command Algorithm 2, (Int 2 - just shy of being 'dumb-bots') and education (Edu 5 - mostly through an on board, basic encyclopedia), and have a minimal skill package (One or two skills to level 0). 30,400 Credits
Upgrades to Command Algorithm 3 (Int 5) and more extensive Encyclopedia (Edu 7), with 2 level 1 skills are possible, though this almost doubles the cost of the robot to 58,900 Credits
Both can take complicated commands, and respond to the best of their ability, but they're hardly going to be sparkling conversationalists.
The longer than 'natural' arms throw the robot into the uncanny valley territory intentionally, though some slight modification can be done to 'disguise' a Helper as a human when wearing heavy clothing.
CRC also makes a much more advanced SEAN model that is not only 2 tech levels higher and ten times as expensive, with fully autonomous learning capability, emotion sim, personality program, and high positronic/synaptic processing mesh but is built on nearly the same chassis as the HELPER, with shorter arms and more 'human-like' posture, and better servo sheathing, though it carries nearly the same style of head. (Int 7, Edu 13)
In the course of our game, several simple HELPER units turned out to be more advanced SEAN units heavily modded to resemble their simpler brethren, and were used for political and industrial espionage as well as covert action, as well as some using their presence as ship crew to function as drop boxes for intel on different worlds without their crew's knowledge.
As a silly side-note HELPER initially stood for:
Heuristic
Enhanced
Laborer
Programmed for
Efficient
Repair
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 586 x 800px
File Size 57.2 kB
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