Created for me by Tempestryder @ FA.

Name:
Mantis Gardener
Class:
Ecosphere Maintenance Robot
Role:
Primarily: Gardener
Secondary: Hunter and Landscape Designer
Origin:
Generic Template - common to all Asgard Habitats.
The design is modified as needed, thus all measures given here are for the default model.
Size:
Torso 6 m tall, 2 m wide, 6 m long
Weight:
5 metric tons
Power:
Fuelcell for normal operation
Beta decay nuclear battery for memory core and beacon

Mobility System:
On smooth surfaces, the Mantis lowers itself down onto the roadwheels that form its legs upper tighs, allowing it high speeds.
On rough terrain the legs are used to walk.
Each leg-tip can spread like a camels hoof to increase its surface to reduce ground pressure.
In swampy terrain a Mantis will walk with spread feet as well as on its roadwheels to reduce ground pressure even more.

Work System:
There are two utility arms that can equip a wide range of tools. These tools are stored under the rear caraprace, in the storage compartment, which opens for this.
The rear storage compartment, 3m x 2m x 2m, is attached to the Mantis forward body with a mechanism not unlike tractor tool mounts. Per default it contains a mulcher to compact wood and leafes. When the Mantis is tasked to serve in a hunter / predator role to reduce a population of animals, it stores caught or culled animals in the storage compartment for transport to its unloading point.
To fill its cargo compartment, the upper torso rotates around.

Control System:
Most Mantis units are controlled by an advanced general purpose AI or even a low grade AC.
If equipped with an AI, they are typically intended to do general maintenance, like trimming bushes, mowing the lawn or removing sick trees.
If equipped with a low grade AC, they are typically intended to work in a more complex environment, or to handle more moral questions. This is usually the case when a Mantis is designed to cull populations, like rabbits or rats, or has to work in a highly integrated biosphere like a jungle, where every tree is home to dozens of species, even when sick and in need of being removed to prevent the sickness of spreading.
Mantis Gardeners can command Trilobites, of which they carry one plus a complement of Octopi in their storage compartment when tasked with a long-term job.
Mantis are highly intelligent and eloquent, just their worldview and communication concepts are often off. They understand sapient communication fully, but they also understand communication of the animals they observe during their work.
Mantis units working as a team, like when clearing a river or driving animals from one area to another, communicate visually via light signals on their wings or use animal noises.
Their voices are comparatively harmonious, but they are made up of sound snippets of nature sounds, as their operation ceases as soon as a place has enough biological sophonts around to maintain the ecosphere themselves: Mantis units were not intended to work alongside biological sophonts.



Notes:
Quirky communication:
Having a Mantis lift its storage compartment and flashing its white rear lamps to indicate danger to, say, a human, is for them like when humans use a word in a foreign language. Deer have a better chance understading that gesture right away.
Also, AC controlled Mantis units are extremely curious. They might wander around, watch the stars, but most of them study the animals of the ecosphere. Seeing a Mantis stalk a single ant for hours is a guarantee for the Mantis to be an AC unit.
They have a distinct concept of "self", but it's a mix between noncorporeal software and a hivemind-component, as AC Mantis are either running a matured, generic purpose self-learnign AI or a template copy of a Habitat AC and as both see themselves as part of the Habitat.

Also, copying it's runtime to a different vehicle, robot or location to keep on a discussion with a person is okay for a Mantis, but might be confusing for those experiencing it the first time.
It may well happen that they were stopped by a scythe lashing out of the bushes as to prevent them to step on a rare flower an ant is crawling around on, and then being questioned about their little rooftop spice garden, walking alongside a 5t insectoid robot into town.
That the chitchat then proceeds through the elevators speakers, their home stereo and finally, on the roof, again through the towering robot, might take some getting used to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMz8b3goaW4

Posted using PostyBirb

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Auxiliary informations for people wanting to draw a Mantis, or Fink in particular:

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Fink is my OC, but I wouldn't call him/it a "character". I usually think of Fink as a draft of a rolemodel.
He was conceptualized, his/its specific traits and behavior and the reasons for him/it to behave as he/it does were all done by me for myself and my story-universe.

The main point is that at the moment there is no story, so Fink hasn't received a precise visual description.
So, a picture currently made for Fink might end up, once a story is written, for another Mantis Gardener.

This is in case you should personally feel attachment to your art going to depict Fink, who is, for all matters relevant, behaving like an autistic child in some regards, and like a snarky biology professors in others.
Examples are that Fink knows everything about mating behavior of species.
So, like Fink takes great care not to disturb a birds nest, Fink might find a human working in the nature so interesting that he stalks him back to his home.
He does that with birds and deer, so why shouldn't he do it with humans or doggygirls?

And even worse - for all bystanders - like he secures and helps secretly providing branches and other stuff for birds nest being build for courtship, Fink might decide that the female (the interesting human is interested in) seems to like certain kinds of flowers. And when Fink should learn about her visiting the male, the human in question might find a Mantis hanging on the balcony, placing

Currently all images I got for Mantis Gardeners are roughly depicting roughly the same robot.
So, so far, I think of them as pictures of Fink.

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When you put Fink into a scene where there is background in a large sense of scale:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34527547/ ( which is the inside of https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34333614/ or, more detailed: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34315984/ )

This is the habitat New Heidelberg.
There are about 1000 Habitats of this type alone on the moon where New Heidelberg is located.
Each habitat is dedicated to one climate zone, or Biome.
You may find one that is a Taiga, another that's a South Polar climate, but also some that operate deserts, marshlands, mediterranean forests, steaming jungles, high altitude mountains and also carribean or mediterranean seas, spotted with the occasional island.

Fink himself - or one of his instances, considering that most robots use an AI or immature AC "from storage" - works in New Heidelberg. He was one of 20 Mantises that managed the forests and the parks inside the city ring on the upper end of the rotating habitat.
Now that New Heidelberg is settled and has a growing population - still a long way from its design maximum of 150.000 average - of about 10.000, the Mantises no longer maintain the parks and trees in the habitat drums upper rim, as that is now an area the biologicals are assumed to take care of.
Once the population grows big enough to have actual idle hands - or unemployed bums or whatever one might wish to call them - the remaining Mantises will move back into storage after the habitat AC will formally have posted the jobs such as forester, ranger and such, and provided self-learn manuals for the people that the greater society does not "make use of".
Fink hopes that it'll be a long time until the population grows so much, as he studies all biological lifeforms equally, but doggygirls and human males are the only ones that use technology and thus permit him to gather data much faster and more easily, as well as them having much more complex life cycles.

The town council posted already a while ago that people that go to the forest lakes should not put their clothes in a disorderly fashion on the ground, but should bring a picnic basket along to store the clothes in there.
Because else Fink - or another Mantis, might find the fabric being biodegradable , seemingly discarded, and then shredder the stuff and mulch it into the ground.

And not everyone looks forward to walk nude back into town after having gone skinny dipping.

Notable aspects:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/36561235/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34542772/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/37906993/

Finks head antenna, a flexible metal coil spring in a silicone coating, carries at its end a lightbulb able to produce RGB colors.
This signallight is used as a basic aide in "training" wild animals, such as a certain color meaning that Fink brings food along for them, which the animals soon learn to recognize.

The "Wings" on his back can be folded against the body. The have gauze between their rigid parts, used to catch air/dust samples for later analysis, but they also serve as aerosol sprayers and as long-distance antennas and balancing aides when he is climbing.

Finks knee-joints are embraced by a wheel hub with all terrain tires. When the surface is slat and hard enough, Fink can lower his body and scoot around like a school bus.
When walking on hard ground like rock, he uses the spike-like tips for maximum hold.
On soft ground, Finks lower legs spread the cowlings of them into four equal braces, which pull metal grates out from under the cowlings and hold them stable, resulting in Finks feet turning from spiked tips into a "+" shape with a small spike in the center