by Howard Marsh
Harry was well aware of Professor Lars Angstrom’s reputation. “I used Angstrom’s text on cybernetics in my graduate course. It’s the gold standard, well ahead of its time. We all thought that he died ten years ago in some freak boating accident in the North Sea. I guess that’s another of the mysterious disappearances that Nebula uses to take people into this world.”
“Right,” Brad replied, as he took Harry by the arm and led him off toward the area from which Nigel and his two companions came. The other three walked along.
They entered a small area near one of the corners of the room, and Harry saw a number of machines that appeared to be robots of some sort. A man and woman were working with one of them, and when Harry and the others approached, they put down their tools and came over to introduce themselves.
“Hi, you must be Harry Ambrose,” the man said, as he removed his safety glasses and took off his gloves. “I’m Doug White, and this is my colleague, Judith Glass. We’re the mechanics on the team.”
“Not quite,” Brad remarked. “Both of them are world class researchers. Doug is one of the best materials scientists in the world, and Judith is his equivalent in electrical engineering.”
“Brad’s being kind,” Doug countered, as he walked up to Harry and shook his hand. Judith followed suit. Harry had never heard of either of them, but that wasn’t surprising, since science and engineering researchers tended to form very narrow interests, and their circle of friends and acquaintances were similarly small and centered on their work areas.
“We’ve been expecting you,” Judith added, “and we’re really happy that you’ve finally arrived. Lars’ loss has been a big blow to all of us. We not only were close friends, but we also relied on him to help with some of the design concepts that we’re trying to perfect. Let’s show you what we have.”
They walked over to the area where seven robots were standing. Five were crude, open frameworks, with small mechanical actuators and electronic modules suspended within their open structures. They also had what appeared to be sensors and arm-like appendages attached to the outside structural members. Some had legs that looked like insect legs, and others had both legs and wheels. The other two were much more complete, with outer shells, but they had the same sorts of arms and legs, and both also had wheels. All but one of the robots were small, at most one meter in height and width. The other one was about the height of a human and looked menacing. It had what appeared to be sensors all around its body, and had a tool that looked a bit like a flashlight at the end of one of its six arms.
“OK, meet the crew,” Doug said, as he pointed to each of the robots. “The big guy here is one of the alien robots that we rescued from the ship that crashed in England. He’s a sentry robot. You can see that he’s pretty well equipped to see things, lots of eyes and ears. He also has that x-ray gun, the thing that looks like a flashlight.
“The other one with an outer shell is the only other alien robot that we were able to rescue and repair. This one is a worker bee. It’s able to do a pretty large number of tasks, and it’s a lot more intelligent than the sentry. The big guy has a very well defined and limited mission, but this one is very adaptable. We used it as the model for the others that we built here. Ludmila constantly remarks on the artificial intelligence in these guys. I’m sure you and Ludmila will have a lot of discussions about that. She and Lars were continually marveling over the design, so it must be pretty good.”
Judith then explained the work that they were doing. “We built these five robots based on what we learned from the ones on Mars and Titan. Each of them represents an exact functional replica of one of the types that the aliens put there, but they’re smaller, and we didn’t bother to give them outer shells. But all the mechanical capabilities and the programming are identical to the alien robots. We made some changes in the electronic design to make it easier for us to build them from standard integrated circuits, but from a functional standpoint, they’re identical to what we’ll have to deal with on Mars.”
“This lets us iron out all the technical wrinkles,” Brad added, “and we can use them to practice the mission, so that we get everything right. We can’t afford any errors once we get to Mars. The main problems are being able to control them when the aliens arrive and to keep everything that we do secret.”
At this point, Yuri and Ludmila arrived. “Sorry to be late,” Yuri said, as they joined the rest of the group. “We got tied up in a discussion with a couple of the research assistants. It seems that there’s a bit of a wrestling match between the folks who are trying to debug the existing software and the ones who need to make some more changes in the heuristics dealing with multitasking coordination. But I think that Ludmila and I worked out a compromise.”
“Why don’t you explain the current problem to Harry?” Brad replied.
“OK,” Yuri continued. “You already know that we need to get the robots to be able to respond to alien commands while they’re doing our work too. Right?”
Harry nodded. He knew that much.
“So, there are a couple of big challenges. One is that we need to make sure that this dual tasking doesn’t introduce any chaotic behavior, or any big failure modes, or evidence that we’re tinkering with them. And we have to make sure that we can retain direct links and control to all the robots, even when the aliens are also interacting with them and when they’re coordinating among themselves on the tasks that they’ve been given by both the aliens and us. That’s where you and I come in. We need to develop the back-and-forth linkages and logical processes between us and the robots and between the robots themselves. We need to supervise the coordination of their internal intelligent processes to make it seem that they’re doing what the aliens told them to do but also to respond to our tasking in a very subtle way. Once we get that solved, Ludmila can make sure that the right software gets developed.”
Ludmila picked up the thread. “The second challenge is to be able to manage the stored data in the robots so that any indication of our presence is hidden from the aliens, at least until the operation is far enough along that it wouldn’t matter any longer.”
Brad added, “What Ludmila means is that once the biological agents take effect, the aliens will probably suspect something anyway, so our involvement would become pretty obvious even if they weren’t able to see the data.”
“Yes,” Ludmila agreed. “That makes the challenge a bit less, but we still need to be absolutely certain that our actions will remain completely invisible for at least a few weeks, or maybe a few months. The good thing is that during this time, the aliens will be busy preparing for the invasion, and that should keep them from doing any detailed analysis of the robots’ software or anything else that would point to us. Let’s show you what we’ve been able to accomplish so far. Brad, Nigel, how about joining me in a bit of a demonstration.”
The three of them put on headgear that Harry could tell immediately was the type of gear that he used in his own lab. It had sensors and actuator electrodes that allowed the brain to be connected directly into a processor that could manage the electromagnetic communications between the human and the machine.
Once the headgear were all in place and the seven robots were turned on, Ludmila continued with her explanation. “OK, so now Brad, Nigel, and I are able to interact directly with the seven robots. It takes a bit of practice to coordinate things, since we can all interact with all of them, either one at a time or as a group, as we choose. I think that you’ve done similar things in your own lab.”
“Yeah, but not on this scale,” Harry replied. “We usually limit ourselves to two humans and only three robots, and each of us only interacts with one at a time, but I get the picture.”
Judith then explained how they would link to the robots at the same time as the aliens did. “The trick is to be able to communicate with them in a way that minimizes the chance of being detected and to make as small a modification to the robots’ electronics as possible. So we developed an elect
romagnetic link that’s very similar to the one that the aliens use, but we shifted the frequency to a much higher band. It’s at a frequency that they wouldn’t be interested in, so they don’t see our communications. This is a bit risky, since our signal isn’t below the noise floor, but everything that we know about them tells us that we’re operating in a frequency band that’s totally uninteresting to them. It also allows us to use some of the conductive parts of the robot structures as our antennas, so our hardware modifications can be buried within the robots’ bodies, with nothing on the outside to give them a clue to our modifications. Our electronics should be able to remain hidden from anything less than a very thorough examination.”
The seven robots started to move, and Harry was impressed by the way that they seemed to be cooperating on several tasks. Two of them were doing some sort of hardware construction, and it was clear that they were acting like intelligent beings with a common objective and different roles. Another four were cooperating to move a large piece of equipment that was sufficiently large and complicated that it took all of them to keep it from tipping or from spilling some loose parts onto the floor. The dexterity was impressive. It was at least as good as anything that Harry had been able to develop in his most advanced robots.
“Now watch this,” Ludmila said. “Up to this point, Nigel has been directing the robots, and Brad and I have been monitoring things. Now we’ll see what happens when Brad and I give contradictory direction to three of those four robots who are trying to move that large piece of equipment.”
Nothing changed immediately, as the robots continued with their task. Then, almost spontaneously, three of the robots changed their positions, so that they could release the fourth to another task. It went off to continue assembling another piece of equipment.
“See, our supervisory processes assure continuity of activity until the robots can determine that it’s OK to let one of them respond to the new task. They responded to what Brad told them to do, and in a few seconds, they should be able to respond to my task without any bad effect on the original task.”
Sure enough, about ten seconds later, the three robots adjusted their positions to prepare for one of them to leave for another task. Two of them moved to opposite sides of the large piece of equipment and extended small shelf-like protrusions from the lower part of their frames. The equipment was then lowered onto those shelves. Once the third robot’s assistance was no longer needed, it left to do whatever it was that Ludmila told it to do, and the remaining two slowly rolled on their wheels until they reached the place where they were told to place it. The shelf-like protrusions then lowered to floor level, and the robots used their arms to slide the equipment off.
Brad smiled, clearly proud of the accomplishments of his team. “You can see that they initially had two options to move the equipment. When four of them were available, they could easily pick it up and carry it. That was the quickest, easiest, and least risky way to do the job. They could also manage with three, but that was a bit less optimal, so they didn’t choose that until they needed to. The other option was to use their bodies as carts to carry the load. It gave them less maneuverability and was a bit slower, but it would be sufficient, so the other robot was allowed to depart to respond to my task. Pretty neat, isn’t it?”
“I’ll say,” Harry replied. “Will it work with more complex conflicting objectives?”
“That’s what I work on,” Yuri said. “You know that complex, interactive, automata are my specialty. I finally get to work with machines that are sufficiently intelligent and interactive that I can put all my theoretical work to the real test. Everything works smoothly.”
Ludmila added that the software is also successful in hiding any indications or records of human interaction from the data that the aliens could see. “During this demonstration, Nigel was playing through the interface that the aliens use. It was as if he was an alien, and had visibility into everything that an alien would be able to see. He continued to monitor the original tasks, and he didn’t even have a clue that Brad and I were introducing conflicting commands, since we were playing as humans, and all records of our interactions were routed into the portions of the data bases that the aliens don’t see. He was totally in the loop with what all seven were doing, and it all looked like they coordinated among themselves to do the tasks.”
“That’s right,” Nigel agreed. “The three of us were involved with all seven robots at the same time, and I was even the one in an oversight role for the four. I could impose detailed direction at any time, and I had detailed knowledge of how they were interacting with one another and making collaborative decisions. When the two robots left the group, it looked to me that they had a backlog of tasks that they’d been diverted from when I gave them this new task. I had no idea that the so-called backlog was actually new tasking from Brad and Ludmila. It just looked to me as if they were returning to tasks that my assignment had interrupted. As far as the aliens would know, when we intrude, it would seem the same. That’s what we hope to achieve.”
“It looks like you have everything worked out already. Why do you need me?”
“Well,” Brad replied. “Some of this is a bit rigged. Our human-to-robot interface isn’t perfect yet. We cheat when we have multiple people in the loop. We have to time-share the communication link, or the robots sometimes get conflicting or garbled commands, and our own interfaces may drop the connections. We’re also faking a bit of the complexity management that Yuri spoke about. Most of the difficulty was in the way that the human-machine interface was implemented. Lars had devised a scheme that he was sure would take care of the problem, but he wasn’t able to get all the wrinkles ironed out before we lost him. That’s why he went topside, to get some consulting help from one of our researchers up above.”
“So you need me to finish his work?”
“That and also to be able to work on-site to get everything working properly with the human-robot-alien network and then to help with the control of the robots during the operation. We’ll need you and Yuri to monitor everything and alert us to departures from normal that could tip our hand. We have all the monitoring equipment that you’ll need, but we’ll have to rely on your experience with these sorts of things to detect the signs that a failure mode may be about to occur. If we have enough warning, we can back off and let the aliens have full control until the situation stabilizes.”
“Wow,” Harry said. “That’s a pretty tall order. These changes of state can happen pretty fast. We normally just do near real time supervision. You seem to be asking for real time prediction.”
Yuri replied, “It’s almost real time, but there’s still about a second or two of warning with the predictive technique that Lars and I were working on. I can show you when we get to the lab. It’ll still be pretty stressful, but more or less like one of those computer games that the kids like to play. I figure that we could take it for about an hour before collapsing, but an hour should be more than enough to do what we need to do.”
Brad removed his headgear and motioned to Ludmila and Nigel to remove theirs. Then he gave his to Harry. “Here, it’s your turn. We need to get you calibrated and trained to work with the robots. Normally, this takes a person several months, but you already have experience with this type of device, so we’re going to fast-track you. First, we need to get you registered into the system and calibrated for the type of information transfers that we do in our system. You shouldn’t have any problems adapting pretty quickly. Put the headgear on, and I’ll connect you to the interface device that converts the type of binary data in the robots’ brains and nervous systems into the type of neural signaling that our brains use. Then we’ll run through the full range of sensory signals so your brain can adapt itself.”
Harry put the headgear on, and Brad adjusted some controls on a console off to the side. Harry could then feel a slight tingle in his fingers and toes, and he began to see a display of colors sequencing from red to violet. He also sensed a b
it of an odor and taste, and he knew immediately that the calibration process was underway.
“Are you getting the sensory signals?” Brad asked.
“Yeah. It’s a lot like the calibration that we do in my lab. Hey, it stopped. Am I calibrated that quickly?”
“You sure are. It’s 100% and about ten times faster than someone who starts from scratch. That’s what we expected. Your brain was already conditioned to deal with this sort of interface since it’s so similar to the one that you developed. We expected that since you did a lot of work based on some of Lars’ early experiments.”
“So am I finished or is there more?”
“There’s more. The whole thing will probably take a couple of weeks. We need to get you trained and proficient with interfaces to at least four robots simultaneously. But first, let’s see how you can handle a single interface. It will be a lot different from what you’re used to. These robots are much more advanced than the machines that you interfaced with in the lab, and you’ll have to manage multiple sensory and motor interactions. Up to now, you’ve been connected to the calibration box. Now I’m going to switch you to one of the worker bee robots over there.”
Brad was right about the multiple sensory interfaces. At first, Harry was almost blown over by the confusion of visual and audio inputs. Things were complicated even more by the fact that the robots had more than two eyes and ears. Sensory data was coming in from all directions, and he felt a bit dizzy at first.
“Are you OK?” Brad asked. “If you want to sit down for a minute, that’s OK. Most people get really dizzy this first time. Some even black out, and we were ready to catch you if you started to fall.”
“No. I’m OK. I just got a bit dizzy, but I can handle it. It’s almost like looking into a kaleidoscope and listening to three or four channels on the radio, all at the same time.”
“OK,” Brad replied. “Now try to separate the signals out. It’s a bit like driving a car while the radio is on and someone in the passenger’s seat is talking to you. You’ll get used to working with the inputs of interest while the others are in the background.”
