Freelance Traveller

NHR 7000 Autonomous Low Berth Robot

designed by Ewan Quibell

This article originally appeared in the September 2012 issue.

The NHR 7000 Autonomous Low Berth (ALB) was designed as a rescue robot for disaster situations, based on the Daud Enterprises’ TL10 Portable Low Berth concept. NHR licensed the patent from Daud Enterprises and added one of their own to create the ALB. The ALB is designed to be able to run all the instrumentation, command, sensors, and communications, as well as the low berth, indefinitely from the Solar Cells directly, and is able to run these on battery for up to 66 hours if needed, however, the robot brain can power off (and on) equipment (including itself) to extend the duration of the low berth to 165 hours as needed. If the grav drives are powered up, the ALB has a duration of 4.4 hours at maximum acceleration. The batteries can be recharged from the solar cells in 7.3 hours. The ALB can be connected to an external power source as may be necessary through the standard power interface provided. The robot itself, including the frame and components, costs Cr 104,468 (or Cr 83,574 in quantity), and design and manufacture is such that shipboard low berths may be attached to it without losing continuity of power, thus allowing the berth and occupant to be moved between installations without the need for them to be woken.

Designed for first response rescue, the robot has the ability to search through rubble or wreckage in order to locate sophonts in distress, following which it can analyse the area for weak points or danger areas before freeing the sophont by digging through or moving the rubble as necessary. Once the sophont is free, the robot uses its grav drive to nullify gravity in the area and the weight of the sophont to be able to manoeuvre them into the low berth easily for treatment. The low berth is used as a treatment bed so the robot can administer first aid or other medical procedures as may be necessary before freezing the patient and returning them to hospital or a designated disaster medical relief area.

Following the adoption of the robots by the emergency services, and their exceptional service record, users found that by the use of the brain and program interfaces they were able to re-task the robots on the fly, enhancing the medical skill at the expense of the ability of the robot to rescue sophonts. This enabled the robots to perform as trauma doctors performing complicated procedures and operations at the site of the incident without the need for the patent to be taken to hospital. The slave link controls also allows human medical experts to take control of the robot remotely in order to perform even more advanced procedures if the robot flags them, sometimes negating the need for further surgery when the patent is taken to hospital to recuperate. The ability to swap out low berths has enabled disaster relief efforts to be better organised with some ALBs performing rescue and first aid, while others perform advanced medical procedures, and still others are re-tasked with high grav vehicle skill in order to allow patients to be delivered more quickly and more safely to hospital.

The ability of the robots to be re-tasked has opened up the medi-bot market to the ALBs. Their initial programming is set to Grav Vehicle-1, Medical-2, and they are sent out to normal emergency response calls for medical assistants instead of sending out ambulances and human paramedics or doctors. Without the need to rescue patients the robot can assess, diagnose and treat the patent before taking them to hospital to recuperate, or freeze them and take them as necessary. This has allowed those robots that would normally only be used for disasters to be utilised as an everyday resource while the users know that they can easily be re-tasked to achieve their original objectives. The small cargo compartment is normally used to carry medical supplies and blood.