Shudusham Concords

A tragic attack against the Sylean Federation, which occurred in -112 in Core Sector, helped shape the Third Imperium's current attitudes about robots. A terrorist group rigged one of the Dover-Gabe courier robots to self-destruct, and managed to sneak it aboard a 90,000-ton Sylean battleship. The Empire's Banner was on a goodwill mission in orbit around the world Fornol (Core 1715) when the robot's hydrogen/oxygen fuel-cell exploded. Fornol's premier, two ambassadors, and the Sylean vice-minister were killed, along with a host of ship's officers and crewmen. The repercussions from this event were so far reaching that the Sylean Federation was nearly thrown into a civil war.

This disaster prompted twelve worlds of the Sylean Federation to meet on the neutral world of Shudusham to draft an agreement dealing with the issue of weaponry carried by robots. After much deliberation, all twelve worlds finally signed the completed Shudusham Concords in -110. A hardcopy is on display in the Museum of Sylean History on Capital.

The Concords have no legal force in the Third Imperium, but they have served as a model for many high-tech worlds' documents governing the manufacture and use of robots.

The Concords contain seven articles:

• Article 1: Gives a general explanation of the document, overall guidelines for robot construction, locations and occasions for robot use, and the rights of robot owners. The robot's owner is responsible for all actions the robot may perform, whether direct or indirect. Reliability is thus identified as a key issue, as is motivation for a robot equipped with a weapon or used as a weapon.
• Article 2: Describes detailed programming guidelines for general functions.
• Article 3: Covers detailed manufacturing standards to insure reliability and provide for the safety of owners and the general public.
• Article 4: Gives guidelines for when and where weapons are allowed or prohibited.
• Article 5: Describes specific programming logic for weapon control and usage. Most strongly worded of all the articles.
• Article 6: Describes detailed manufacturing standards to insure weapon reliability, when weapon installation is allowed.
• Article 7: Provides for a new agency whose sole responsibility is to enforce the articles of the Concords.

Forty-three amendments were added over the active life of the Concords, dealing with technological changes, minor logic enhancements, and additional enforcement procedures. The 37th amendment is well-known; it states that no pseudobiological robot may attempt to pass itself off as a living being.

The Shudusham Concords proved to be effective. An entire interstellar industry grew out of the need for sensory devices to aid in enforcement of the Concords on the original twelve member worlds and later signatories. The Concords lost their legal force when Cleon declared himself emperor of the Third Imperium in Year 0.

Many worlds still use parts of the pre-lmperial Shudusham Concords as a model for their own laws to keep abuses with robots in check. Most worlds declare an owner to be responsible for the actions of his robot, even if the owner did not directly order the action. For example, if an owner orders his robot to protect his home, and in so doing the robot kills someone approaching the home, the owner can be charged with accidental murder.

Robots in the Third Imperium

In 298, Makhidkarun marketed the first line of robots with TL–13 brains. These robots, using "high autonomous" software, were more intelligent than earlier robots, so they could be operated by ordinary individuals without special skills or training. By making robots usable by every citizen, Makhidkarun revolutionized the popularity of robots within the Third Imperium.

About one hundred years later, in 404, a group of roboticists met at Shudusham to share their latest technological breakthroughs. Shudusham was chosen as the site because of its historical significance and central location. The conference was a success; so much so, in fact, that the Shudusham Robotics Conference has continued to meet every ten years. Roboticists, manufacturers, heavy robot users, journalists, and other interested parties are drawn from all over explored space to attend a portion of the one-year conference,

Makhidkarun announced another breakthrough in 711: roboticists working in cooperation with the Imperial Navy Research Lab produced a reliable robot brain with twenty-five percent synaptic processing. Robots with more synaptic units are more intelligent, so these machines were capable of more powerful programming. Expert robots with higher skill levels appeared more often in the marketplace.

A few years ago, SURD received the Shudusham Conference Medal of Merit for the first convincing "human" pseudo-biological robot. The robot, nicknamed Telku, was the main attraction of the meeting. Pseudo-bios are not mass-produced yet by any Imperial manufacturer, but technology has reached the stage at which such robots can fool real humans.

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Far Future Enterprises or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Classic Traveller Robots (Book 8)
• Periodical: Classic Traveller Periodical: MegaTraveller Travellers' Digest No. 8
• MegaTraveller Imperial Encyclopedia
• MegaTraveller Referee's Companion