Imperial Agribot
| Imperial Agribot | |
|---|---|
 Four treads, one arm, near-zero notice | |
| Tech Level | TL–10 |
| Mass | 10 tons |
| Cost | Cr209,000 |
| Mode | Ground (Tracked) |
| Type | Cargo Vehicle |
| Speed | 150 kph |
| Cargo | 4 tons |
| Crew | 0 |
| Passengers | 0 (unless using cargo space) |
| Planting and harvesting bot, common as the dirt it travels upon | |
An Imperial Agribot is a tracked agricultural vehicle designed to plant and harvest crops.
Description (Specifications)[edit]
The Imperial Agribot is a well-known, widely-used agricultural robot, thanks to its origin in the First Imperium (see History & Background below).
The agribot accomplishes the functions of a soil tiller, combine, picker, planter, sprayer, and more types of agricultural vehicles using its multifunctional arm. With proper directions for the crops it will be tending to, it can perform all necessary labor for the full cycle from planting through harvest. Precise mapping and good sensors allow analysis and care beyond what most non-expert sophonts are capable of. The onboard computer comes loaded with an agriculture-focused database, providing extensive reference with which to diagnose problems and ensure optimal crop yields. In many cases, it only needs to be provided with seedlings and a field of good soil, or a field of existing crops, and told to go do its thing.
An agribot is common enough farming equipment that many who drive or fly by one give it no more notice than the crops it is tending. However, it notices passers-by and serves a secondary function as security. Agribots even run a translator program so as to communicate with any sophonts encountered, albeit only to answer simple questions (the limited onboard AI is barely able to hold a conversation outside of its field of expertise) and classify the danger level they pose, so as to decide whether to ignore them, inform their owners, or alert local law enforcement. It is stronger and much faster than most sophonts and knows it, so lost but friendly sophonts may be offered a ride to nearby facilities, if only to quickly and efficiently remove them from the fields the agribot is working. Entertainment holos aside, agribots are not combat vehicles and will (unless reprogrammed) flee from any violence, broadcasting on emergency channels until they are at a safe distance. Creating a stampede by setting off harmless explosives near a bunch of agribots thus tends to result in grumpy law enforcement showing up, on any world where law enforcement at least has radio, much to the regret of whatever bored individuals decided to try that prank.
One deliberate weakness of the design is its limited range, to prevent a stolen agribot from getting too far away. It runs on batteries that can be quickly swapped at a charging station (the agribot uses four batteries in part so it can perform the swap itself, while having at least one battery with charge at all times during the operation), which in turn usually runs on local solar power or the local community power plant. Its 4 ton cargo capacity is more of a compromise than a weakness: much larger would make for a substantially more expensive vehicle, while much smaller would require more trips to drop off produce or pick up supplies making it significantly less efficient. The cargo space also leads to its classification as a cargo vehicle: whatever it does in the field, it spends a significant amount of time hauling supplies to the field or produce from the field, with around half its volume taken up by cargo space.
With access to a charging station, good soil with access to water (usually a river, lake, or underground aquifer), maintenance, and the right crops, one Imperial Agribot can tend roughly one square kilometer of farmland, feeding about 1,000-1,500 people (conservative estimate, including allowance for minor disasters) if the crops are dedicated to food with little to no other products. This is rarely a square, especially on smaller colonies: a 100 meter deep section following 10 kilometers of river is more common. Recommended practice is to put a charging station at either end of the field; if multiple agribots are present with adjacent fields, each charging station will host a set of batteries for each agribot's field it is next to. There is no end of tales of small (population code 1 or 2)) colonies starting up with one agribot, but no colonists technically skilled enough to perform maintenance nor any way to get spare parts (neither having manufacturing capability, nor producing goods in enough quantity to attract regular trade service), starving once their agribot broke down. The most common failure modes were that the arm broke or seized up (rendering the agribot incapable of work), or the batteries wore down and became unable to hold a charge. In either case, the agribot's database remained available (with a wired connection to the charging station if the batteries wore down), and could have been consulted so the colonists could learn how to farm manually (another skill set the colonists did not plan on needing) - but either the colonists did not think to do this, or actively refused to do so.
It is not uncommon for naïve observers to note that an agribot is not as efficient in any one of its functions as a dedicated vehicle would be. For instance, it tills only two or three rows at a time, where a dedicated tiller could do more at once. (An agribot can till at a fairly speedy pace, but the observer supposes that a dedicated tiller could be built to move just as fast. This is incorrect in practice: dedicated agricultural vehicles are built cheaply, and as a consequence are considerably slower.) One weakness in this reasoning is that an agribot's ability to shift from task to task on the spot improves overall efficiency as compared to driving one vehicle out to the field, using it, returning it to a shed to swap for another vehicle, and so on. A more important oversight is that a dedicated vehicle would lay idle during part of the planting, growing, and harvesting cycle, while the agribot remains in use the entire time. Roughly half of an agribot's cost is due to its robot brain, but even if that one brain were driving a fleet of dedicated vehicles, that fleet would collectively cost more (both up front, and in maintenance over time) to do the same amount of work over an entire season that one agribot does.
The articulated tracks, with the associated split between cargo in the rear and engine, arm, and sensors in the front, give a high degree of agility for maneuvering through sometimes-dense vegetation. The sensors (split between the front, rear corners, and manipulator hand) allow fine judgment of crop conditions, such as ripeness when deciding which specific fruit to harvest and which to leave for later.
History & Background (Dossier)[edit]
The exact origins are lost to history, but apparently this design was invented during the First Imperium and distributed widely, as an example of what standard Vilani technology could do. Barbarian states that had not yet achieved TL-10 became reliant on Vilani technicians, while other states could be afforded the dream of achieving self-reliance without advancing to the point that they might advance to TL-11 and discover Jump-2 technology, which the Vilani hoarded for themselves. The translator program was more important at that time - back then, the most common user might not speak any language other than one native to their world, whereas in the Third Imperium the most common user will speak Anglic - but it remains useful (and more importantly, expected) enough that the translator program is retained in modern versions.
During the Long Night, wherever local technology regressed below (or had never achieved) TL-10, the Imperial Agribot became a symbol of unsustainable technology. Agribots broke down on countless worlds once spare parts ran out. The design survived on worlds where spare parts were available, and was eventually reintroduced across the Third Imperium as the new Imperium grew. On many worlds, it is now a symbol of the necessity and benefit of the trade network that is the Third Imperium's lifeblood: spare parts in, food and other agricultural goods out. There exists many a trade route, sometimes in the same system, between a farm essentially run by agribots and an asteroid mining colony with basic manufacturing capability (to turn ores into agribot parts).
An Imperial Agribot is an investment, generally only used by farms that have been and expect to be around for a while. Depending on local wages, crop density, and other factors, full payback can take anywhere from 5 to 60 years - but it does happen eventually, so long as the farm and the agribot are kept in working order, there remains a market for the crops, and so on. Many agribots are bought on mortgage, similar to but much smaller than spaceship mortgages, many times from the same institutions that offer spaceship mortgages.
References & Contributors (Sources)[edit]
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- Author & Contributor: Adrian Tymes