Things worth having in a Cyberpunk Campaign

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by hal

Question - what percentage of containers will fail due to faulty maintenance issues or just simple bad luck in the overall scheme of things and what are the remedies suggested? Just looking to refine this, not shoot it down.

Our combined models assume robust robotics and AI and a mature robo-shipping industry. To make it work, a large percentage of the smaller robots must remain operational at all times and "on-duty" failures have to be a tiny percentage overall (like, 0.000001%).

I know nothing about the shipping industry, but as a dumb guess, say that you've got 110% of the robots you need at peak capacity, you normally run at 80% capacity, and about 1% of robots are out of service at any given time. "On duty" failures are a tiny fraction of all maintenance incidents, prevented by decades of human experience and AI analysis.

Predictive AI which takes weather, current affairs, consumer data, and similar information into account is used for logistics, stationing the right robots where they're most likely to be needed.

The robo trucks run almost all the time, usually drawing their power from the mini- and micro-container bots so they don't need to stop to fuel. Unless they're damaged or in for routine maintenance if they're not on the road they're not making money. Even so, they're massively more efficient that human drivers since they don't need to sleep, eat, or have a home life.

The smaller robots spend most of their time "asleep" being carted from one place to another or waiting to be picked up. They "earn their keep" when empty by feeding power to the robo trucks and possibly serving as auxiliary distributed computer networks. Sharing power also means that no robot fails due to lack of power or ever gets too low on power. This optimizes battery life.

Due to a well-developed "internet of things" each robot will have onboard diagnostic sensors which can catch potential maintenance problems. "Power On & Self-Test" (POST) routines occur multiple times per day. "Sick" robots report to the maintenance area in the same way that sick soldiers go on sick call. That eliminates a number of potential problems up front.

Once they've "decided" that they're fit for duty, the smaller container robots "check in" with AI supervisors and are assigned as necessary. Like modern delivery drivers, robots constantly check in with their supervisor, update their status, and track the status of the packages they're carrying.

The micro- and mini-container robots have relatively short range. While they can operate on the street, they are seldom seen outside of shipping facilities which limits theft, vandalism, and wear and tear.

They're programmed to load themselves onto larger robots, plug themselves in to be recharged (or to supply power to other robots in the same network), and then shut down systems that aren't required.

That saves wear and tear on the smaller and more fragile robots while slightly reducing the tare weight and refueling times for the robot trucks (because fewer fuel cells are carried).

Once the robo truck nears a mini- or micro-container robot's destination it "wakes up" any "passengers" which need to be loaded or unloaded and updates its own status. All the newly-woken robots do health status checks and check in with the robot truck and the AI supervisor.

At the destination, the truck slows or stops, picks up and drops off micro- or mini-containers as needed, and continues on its way once it has determined that all its "passengers" are accounted for one way or another.

Inside the retail storage facility, the mini-containers route themselves to the correct location and then off-load all their micro-containers. The micro-containers do the wake-up and self-test routine, everyone updates their status, and the micros travel to their storage boxes. Once there, they can either nest inside the storage box to recharge or call on a handler robot to unload them. The handler robot then puts the package in the right spot. Everyone updates their status and the package's status.

If the micro is "asleep" inside a storage box when a customer makes a pickup the same code which operates the storage container door opens the cargo bot as well.

Normally, however, the micros and minis are constantly on the move. They move to recharging stations (which might be empty storage boxes or separate stations), check in, self-test, and go to sleep until the next robo truck comes by.

Storage or distribution facilities might also serve as maintenance facilities. SAI expert system computers do initial diagnosis based on the robot's self-diagnostics. Robot mechanics perform basic repairs. Human mechanics and supervisors perform complex repairs and detailed inspections.