fandomhigh | Introduction to Robotics, Friday

A classroom full of teenagers. That was going to be... something.

Kaidan stood at the front of the class, a datapad in his hand and his eyes trained on the students. "Good morning," he said, "And welcome to Introduction to Robotics. I'm Lieutenant Commander Kaidan Alenko of the Systems Alliance, I look forward to meeting the rest of you." He cleared his throat. "Over the past year, my... universe--" It was weird, okay? "--suffered under an attack that involved advanced robotic AIs - that's artificial intelligences - called the geth. Much has been said about the geth and what level of sentience they've got. It's something we'll be talking about later down the line."

He put the datapad down on the desk. "But not yet. I'm given to understand most folks here aren't from the same place, though," he said, "and as we're going to be talking about advanced technology, I'd like to know where your worlds are at, and what experience you might have had in dealing with robotics, virtual intelligences, things like that. So let's start off there."

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If you need to, he's there.

Topher was having entirely too much fun with the schematics he was looking at. Entirely too much.

Though after a while of studying the designs, he did have a comment. And a page full of annotated schematics to go with it.

"Could they be smaller?" he asked, handing his work over to Kaidan. "They seem kind of... noticable."

"They're supposed to be noticeable," Kaidan pointed out. "They're patrol drones, not reconnaissance."

Though as he spoke, he was leaning over the annotated schematics; by the time he was done, the expression on his face could be best described as 'geeking out'.

"Yeah, but you never know what they might find during a patrol," Topher pointed out. "In which case it'd be good to have the advantage of not being seen."

"Maybe, but it also limits the strength of the armor, as well as the size of the weapons," Kaidan pointed out. "Still, this is... this is not bad."

"I know." Real modest, Topher. "But if you wanted to max out the weapons and armor and still keep them from being seen, you could do something else, like program them to seek out cover immediately or make the armor out of some kind of reflective panels that sort of camouflage them. Or you could keep them small, but set up a backup line of drones to come in if the first ones flag any danger."

And now he was just showing off.

Well, the kid had his heart in the right place - even if Kaidan could think of several reasons why his ideas were either already being implemented, or unfeasible. "They're patrol droids," he said. "Half the point is that they give a good show of keeping a place guarded."

He put Topher's schematics back down. "We've got stealth systems, but they're expensive," he added. "We'll go into that later."

He eyed Topher for another moment, then added, "But I am still looking for a teaching assistant, and you seem to have a good grip on the basics."

"Sounds fun," Topher said. "Will this job at any time involve getting to play with robots?"

"I can kick a few things your way every now and again," Kaidan replied. "Just... don't mess with any pre-programmed intelligences."

"Yes! Deal." Topher, stop bouncing. "Also--" because now he was in kiss-ass mode-- "best topic for a class ever. Just saying."

"It's pretty interesting," Kaidan agreed, smiling a bit. "I mean, robots, drones - we've known those for centuries, but we've never quite perfected them. There's always somewhere else to go, once you've got the basics down."

Nerd.

"So a school with people from all across time is probably a good place to work on them," Topher said. "'Cause some people are from way in the future and all that and know what's up. And some people aren't, but they're geniuses anyway."

Like so.

Introduction to Robotics, Friday

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