"Allen Steele - Agape Among The Robots" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

so after it spent a small fortune working out the bugs in its second-generation тАЩbots and an even
larger fortune in consumer advertising, it took the next logical step: the development of a third-
generation, all-purpose universal robot, one which could serve as butler, housekeeper, sentry,
cook, chess-player, dog-walker, babysitter . . . you name it. And just to put the icing on the cake,
CybeServe intended its new тАЩbot to be humanlike: bipedal, about six feet in height, with
multijointed arms and legs and five fingers on each hand.

This was probably the most significant factor, for with the exception of a few experimental

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prototypes like HondaтАЩs P2 of the late тАЩ90s, virtually every robot on the market looked like a fire
hydrant, an oversized turtle, or a vacuum cleaner with arms. A humanlike robot, however, would
not only be aesthetically familiar, but it would also be able to adapt more readily to a household
environment, since it would be able to climb stairs or place objects on tables.

Although CybeServe tried to keep their R3G program secret, the cybernetics industry is small
enoughтАУand the Robot Belt along Route 9 in Massachusetts short enoughтАУthat it was only a
matter of time before word leaked out of its Framingham headquarters. The fact that their R3G
project was codenamed Metropolis, an ironic allusion to the robot in the 1927 silent film directed
by Fritz Lang, was a clear signal that CybeServe meant to pull an end-run around its rival in
Westboro .

When Jim Lang, LECтАЩs founder and CEO, learned that CybeServe was actively engaged in the
development of a third-generation тАЩbot, the lights stayed on all night in the fourth-floor
boardroom. The following morning, Slim Jim summoned his department heads to the executive
suite, where he read them the riot act: LEC was now in a race with CybeServe to be the first
company to produce a third-generation universal robot.

As luck would have it, though, the company wasnтАЩt caught flat-footed: during their spare time,
two of its senior engineers had already been working on third-generation robots.

Where Phil Burton or Kathy Veder managed to find any spare time at a company where
everyone in the R&D divisions typically puts in a 7-by-14 work week is beyond me, yet
nonetheless these two had been using their downtime to tinker in their labs. On their own
initiative, both Phil and Kathy had drafted plans for universal тАЩbots which would utilize the new
Oz chips being produced by Biocybe. Since the Oz 3Megs were capable of processing three
million MIPS, this meant that a third-generation robot could have the approximate learning ability
of a Rhesus monkey, as opposed to a second-generation тАЩbot with the IQ of a well-trained
mouse.

The fact that they had designed their robots independently of each other, without one being
aware of what the other was doing, was no great surprise to anyone. Phil Burton was in charge
of the division which developed the Companion robot, while Kathy Veder was the senior
engineer behind the Guardian III. Their departments were located at opposite ends of the LEC
quad, and their staffs shared little more in common than the company cafeteria. Not only that,
but the two couldnтАЩt be more unalike: Phil Burton, tall and rather skinny, with thinning blond hair,
and a lifelong stutter which betrayed his shyness, and Kathy Veder, short, plump, with unruly
black hair which was seldom combed and an aggressive manner which bordered on outright