Default Assumption: Do robots survive in a vacuum?

[Werner]

I am starting TL16 campaign, one of the characters is a robot, does it need a vac suit, or can it skip that piece of equipment?

[McPerth]

I guess this would depend mostly on its pow source.

If it Works on fuel cells, he'd need oxygen for it to work. If it Works on batteries or micro-fusión power plant, it doen not need it.

[Enoki]

It would depend on the components it was made from. If the could take a vacuum, radiation, and the cold, then yes, the robot could operate in space.

[vegas]

Space isnt cold for EVA purposes. Its a vacuum so heat loss is from black body radiation while heat is gained from the near by star and whatever the robot power source generates. Your robot is good for hours before cold is an issue in the shade. It could heat up fast in the light however...

[whartung]

What did the disclaimers say on the box when you bought it?

Did you get the deluxe all-enviroment model, or the T-shirt world Gentry edition?

[Werner]

Originally Posted by whartung

What did the disclaimers say on the box when you bought it?

Did you get the deluxe all-enviroment model, or the T-shirt world Gentry edition?

This robot, named Ingrid was build right before the Virus struck, thus it is late Third Imperium 1130, TL16, its creator was also involved in creating the Virus, he had a daughter also named Ingrid who died in a terrorist attack, so he built this robot to look and act just like her, it doesn't have an upload of her memories, but he built her using an AI similar to the one the Virus was based on, and he had a bunch of videos of his daughter for the AI to scan so it could imitate her mannerisms and personality.

The robot from the outside looks like his daughter, she has strawberry-blonde hair, blue eyes and freckles, he also made the robot water proof so it doesn't short out if it falls in water or gets rained on.
The robot has a pair of lungs, if it is powered by a fuel cell, it has an internal oxygen supply to power that fuel cell until it exhausts its hydrogen.

When the robot refills its fuel cell, it has a number of options, it can fill its stomach with water and the plug into a recharger, it the electrolizes the water into hydrogen and oxygen and stores both gases, it can fill up on just hydrogen while breathing in oxygen from air, no recharger necessary in that case, she also has a back up battery lasting 30 minutes on its own.

Ingrid has two methods for generating Speech, she has a pair of lungs, artificial vocal cords, a mouth, tongue and teeth for generating speech the way humans do it, she also has a voter with an internal speaker so she can generate speech without moving her mouth and lips, finally she has a radio transceiver that uses her spine as an antenna for communicating with other radios in a vacuum should the need ever arise.

Ingrid has the same body density as a human, she can use her lungs as ballast tanks, when they are filled with air, she floats in water as a human does, when they are filled with Water, she sinks to the bottom. Ingrid can talk under water when using her voder, but her vocal cords do not function when immersed in water, the radio transceiver also is blocked when she is under water, as the radio waves do not Penitrate.

Ingrid does not need to breath constantly as a human does, she does so out of habit as part of her personality emulation, when swimming she tends to keep her face in the water rather than come up for air, this is rather a give away to her true nature to a casual observer.

[AtlanticFriend]

Looks like this robot could endure vaccuum, only she would - IMHO - lose the ability to speak as this requires some air pressure. And there's the explosive decompression issue to take into account. The artificial lung system could be damaged in such conditions.

[Werner]

Originally Posted by AtlanticFriend

Looks like this robot could endure vaccuum, only she would - IMHO - lose the ability to speak as this requires some air pressure. And there's the explosive decompression issue to take into account. The artificial lung system could be damaged in such conditions.

In the vacuum of space, she uses her radio to communicate, it is compatible with ship and suit radios, so she could communicate with someone in a vac suit and on-board a spaceship, in fact since her program is related to that which became the Virus, she has one other ability, actually two which are related to that lineage. If she is infected by the Virus, she can fight it off, and also she could infect a ship's computer and take it over, this ability makes her a rather good space pirate, she was send to the Andromeda Sector (in the Andromeda Galaxy) because of her crimes, she was an equal opportunity pirate preying upon both Imperial and Solomani Confederation shipping, motivated primarily by profit, she played a role in the Galactic Civil War and was ultimately exiled through the Jumpgate to the Andromeda Galaxy, where a bunch or criminals, rebels and now some war refugees now reside.

[whartung]

Originally Posted by AtlanticFriend

Looks like this robot could endure vaccuum, only she would - IMHO - lose the ability to speak as this requires some air pressure. And there's the explosive decompression issue to take into account. The artificial lung system could be damaged in such conditions.

A real potential issue is any contained air pockets that will want to expand in vacuum. Kind of like the bends, but it depends on the outer materials for it and such. I'm sure the interior skeleton wouldn't have a problem.

Mind this problem would only happen once. Once any damage was done from the decompression -- it's done. How well it self repair (perhaps the outer layer is a self-sealing synthetic) may well determine that. Otherwise, it just may have some small blowout pocket damage that may or not be visible while dressed.

[atpollard]

Back in the Robot books and Technology sections of the various rules, there were two basic tracks for robots ... mechanical and artificial biological.

For a MECHANICAL robot, even if designed to appear humanoid due to an exterior silicon coating that was molded to resemble skin, I would assume that the creation behaved like a machine when it came to environmental extremes. It’s skin might crack or melt, but the damage would only be cosmetic rather than functional. On the other hand, any very close examination would always reveal a fundamentally MECHANICAL body that would never function like an organic body.

For an ARTIFICIAL BIOLOGICAL robot, the structures were constructed to mimic biological functions, and I would assume that they would have vulnerabilities similar to biological organisms. This is the price paid for BEING organic rather than mechanical. Now their environmental limits might extend far beyond human norms ... perhaps even into the extremophile range, but their tolerance is not like that of a machine. Thus they might breathe tainted thin or dense atmospheres, but they cannot breathe vacuum or insidious.

That would be my take ... C3P0 can survive in a vacuum, but Pris (Bladerunner) could not. Choose one or the other, but no free lunch.