‘Urb-Bots’ ---The Roving Robots of the SDF-1

[taalismn]

‘Urb-Bots’ ---The Roving Robots of the SDF-1
(aka 'Lang-Toys', 'Robo-roaches', 'Mecha-rats', 'SDF-stepchildren')

“What happened to you, Toombs?!”
“Dropped my wallet in the street while I was in the City. Damn ruter grabbed it before I could pick it up---”
“And he went into the gutter to get it back.”
“---%$^&ing ‘bot wouldn’t give it back to me! Aren’t the bastards supposed to be programmed with something like the five minute rule?!”
“So he fought the garbage sweeper robots.”
“And lost. Yes.”
“They teamed up on me!”

While the primary focus of Robotechnology was on military applications, there was also a great push to prove that the alien technology could benefit the civilian sphere as well. Robotechnologists were encouraged to create spin-off technologies that would garner greater public approval, put the military development programs in a better light, and ideally also help defray the massive development costs with commercial sales.
Besides serving as housing for the workers involved in the research and development going on around the SDF-1, Macross (Island) City was also meant as a showcase of the ‘technologies of tomorrow’, and a great deal of advanced urban planning went into the city, with an eye towards incorporating and showing off new civilian-application technologies, especially as Launch Day neared, and the eyes of the world were affixed on Macross Island. Part of the ‘show’ included Macross City’s ubiquitous ‘urb-bots’, a collection of public service and commercial automatons that would cruise the streets(and selected areas) of the city providing services.
In general, most urb-bots possessed rudimentary drone intelligences, basic visual and audio sensors, standard obstacle-avoidance systems, and wheeled propulsion(in some cases fast enough to outrun a human). They typically had a 12-24 hour battery life charge before needing to return to a servicing and recharging station to recharge, restock, and receive programming updates.

At least four major types of ‘urb-bots’ existed:

-Roving Refreshment Dispensers(RRDs, aka ‘Vend-Os’)-The best known of these were the ‘Petit Cola’ machines, Petit Cola having outfoxed other major brands to score the major sponsorship contract for the machines and representation on Macross Island. The RRDs were the most visible of the urb-bots, being high-standing man-tall vending machines. They were also the most vocal, with a tinny electronic commercial jingle vocalization that many people found off-putting. They also quickly earned a reputation for being the most disturbing of the machines, being programmed with a particularly ‘predatory’ skill set for identifying potential customers and stalking them. Though originally meant only to cruise the major public concourses of Macross City, the RRDs soon acquired a reputation for wandering ‘off reservation’ in search of customers.

-Mobile Audio/Visual Access Communication Station(MAVACS)--- The mobile communications kiosks(or ‘phone taggers’ as they came to be known) that provided secure lines of communication(local cell bands being reserved for military and government use), and could be programmed to serve as couriers, seeking out individuals to establish call-links. Unfortunately, their people-ID skills were generally lacking and were only mosy effective when they had pre-existing voice-identification profiles to properly confirm their targets and release secured access to them. MAVACS didn’t last long after the SDF-1 took off, as their commlinks proved too easily hacked, and both the military and civilian markets were increasingly being issued improved cellphone technology instead.

-Public Photographic Recorder Robots(PPRRs, aka ‘Purs’)---These wandering photography robots made their debut shortly before Launch Day, and were released in anticipation of the influx of visitors and tourists on Macross Island. A number of them were allowed to operate after the relocation of Macross City inside the SDF-1, in part to document the experience of the civilians and show the great morale enjoyed by them. PPRRs, however, soon found their way into the service of the SDF-1’s engineers, who, with a little reprogramming and refitting of the ‘bots, could use them to survey and record construction work, and monitor engineering sections. PPRRs all but disappeared from their original roles as time wore on, but survived in the engineering, contracting, and news media sectors of the SDF-1’s society.

-RUTERs(Roving Urban Trash Elimination Robots(aka ‘dust bin bots’, ‘roborats’)--- Arguably the most useful and utilitarian of the urb-bots were these robo-trashcans or mobile dustbins, low-slung wheeled roving robots equiped with a single grasping utility arm. Variants could be fitted with mops and power washer heads in place of the grasper. These robots were typically assigned to patrol specific areas (typically a street or city block) policing up trash and debris, before returning to their recharge ‘warrens’ to empty their trash bins and plug in for battery recharge and programming updates. The RRG had high hopes for the RUTERs, predicting that once out in the open market, they, and variants of them, would quickly shoulder aside such anemic independently Earth-developed efforts such as the Roomba.

Unfortunately, the First Robotech War dashed those hopes of going mainstream, and the entire production run of urb-bots went away with the SDF-1.
Despite their apparent public relations role, the urb-bots were reactivated with the reconstruction of Macross City inside the SDF-1. Part of this was to provide a sense of normalcy for the displaced civilians, but Doctor Lang also re-tasked the urb-bots as mobile environmental sensors, providing a steady flow of data to the SDF-1’s life support control centers on environmental conditions and finding damage and leaks.
Urb-bots were a staple of life on the SDF-1 during its long voyage, despite niggling annoyance with the idiot-drones, and a mounting body of folklore about them(including Petit Cola Machine-tipping, ‘peeping tom robots’, and reports of ‘assassinations’ of particularly annoying machines). Lynn Kyle in particular was said to have personally started the rumor that the urb-bots were being used by the military to spy on the civilian population(this was never proven).
After the Rain of Death and the re-establishment of Macross City on Earth, urb-bots fell out of favor as frivolities, despite the efforts of several residents of MC to reactivate them for purposes of nostaglia. Many were junked, but the majority of them managed to be saved amd transferred, through the caprice of various ex-Macross technicians, to the new orbital communities, especially the Factory Satellite. Though newer models were experimented with on the Satellites, with varying degrees of success and acceptance(Lisa Hayes is reported to have kicked a particularly annoying unit across a room during her wedding preparations), the original Macross urb-bots became collectors’ items amongst the tech-set. The RUTERs especially enjoyed long second lives in their utility role and reportedly even travelled to Tirol with the Pioneer expeditions. Other examples of the original urb-bots have occasionally appeared in corners of the UEEF(the main messhall on the SDF-3 featured a surviving Petit Cola machine, though its original soft drink stock had been long depleted and its mobility disabled), but the category never caught on on Earth, though larger remote control construction and debris removal machines were commonly used in the Reconstruction.

[glitterboy2098]

in DYRL the trash pick up bots were more roomba like.. certainly i could see that style in use in some areas where an arm equipped mobile trashcan might be too tricky or visually ugly to use.

[keir451]

I can totally see someone taking a baseball bat to a particularly annoyting Petit Cola machine! Also in Macross Frontier we get to see a Roomba like RUTERS scooping trash into a receptacle in the ground, presumably for recycling.

[SRoss]

I can totally see someone taking a baseball bat to a particularly annoyting Petit Cola machine! Also in Macross Frontier we get to see a Roomba like RUTERS scooping trash into a receptacle in the ground, presumably for recycling.

Dude! That's what Rocket Launchers are for.

[slade the sniper]

For some reason, the RUTERS remind me of the Scrub-Bots of Paranoia fame.

-STS

[Seto Kaiba]

I can totally see someone taking a baseball bat to a particularly annoyting Petit Cola machine! Also in Macross Frontier we get to see a Roomba like RUTERS scooping trash into a receptacle in the ground, presumably for recycling.

Nah, the damn thing'd probably start shooting cola cans at you like that 7-Up machine that Jamie from Mythbusters made if you attacked it.

[taalismn]

I can totally see someone taking a baseball bat to a particularly annoyting Petit Cola machine! Also in Macross Frontier we get to see a Roomba like RUTERS scooping trash into a receptacle in the ground, presumably for recycling.

Nah, the damn thing'd probably start shooting cola cans at you like that 7-Up machine that Jamie from Mythbusters made if you attacked it.

Not until they're ready to start the Robot Revolution in earnest.

[Alpha 11]

‘Urb-Bots’ ---The Roving Robots of the SDF-1
(aka 'Lang-Toys', 'Robo-roaches', 'Mecha-rats', 'SDF-stepchildren')

“What happened to you, Toombs?!”
“Dropped my wallet in the street while I was in the City. Damn ruter grabbed it before I could pick it up---”
“And he went into the gutter to get it back.”
“---%$^&ing ‘bot wouldn’t give it back to me! Aren’t the bastards supposed to be programmed with something like the five minute rule?!”
“So he fought the garbage sweeper robots.”
“And lost. Yes.”
“They teamed up on me!”

While the primary focus of Robotechnology was on military applications, there was also a great push to prove that the alien technology could benefit the civilian sphere as well. Robotechnologists were encouraged to create spin-off technologies that would garner greater public approval, put the military development programs in a better light, and ideally also help defray the massive development costs with commercial sales.
Besides serving as housing for the workers involved in the research and development going on around the SDF-1, Macross (Island) City was also meant as a showcase of the ‘technologies of tomorrow’, and a great deal of advanced urban planning went into the city, with an eye towards incorporating and showing off new civilian-application technologies, especially as Launch Day neared, and the eyes of the world were affixed on Macross Island. Part of the ‘show’ included Macross City’s ubiquitous ‘urb-bots’, a collection of public service and commercial automatons that would cruise the streets(and selected areas) of the city providing services.
In general, most urb-bots possessed rudimentary drone intelligences, basic visual and audio sensors, standard obstacle-avoidance systems, and wheeled propulsion(in some cases fast enough to outrun a human). They typically had a 12-24 hour battery life charge before needing to return to a servicing and recharging station to recharge, restock, and receive programming updates.

At least four major types of ‘urb-bots’ existed:

-Roving Refreshment Dispensers(RRDs, aka ‘Vend-Os’)-The best known of these were the ‘Petit Cola’ machines, Petit Cola having outfoxed other major brands to score the major sponsorship contract for the machines and representation on Macross Island. The RRDs were the most visible of the urb-bots, being high-standing man-tall vending machines. They were also the most vocal, with a tinny electronic commercial jingle vocalization that many people found off-putting. They also quickly earned a reputation for being the most disturbing of the machines, being programmed with a particularly ‘predatory’ skill set for identifying potential customers and stalking them. Though originally meant only to cruise the major public concourses of Macross City, the RRDs soon acquired a reputation for wandering ‘off reservation’ in search of customers.

-Mobile Audio/Visual Access Communication Station(MAVACS)--- The mobile communications kiosks(or ‘phone taggers’ as they came to be known) that provided secure lines of communication(local cell bands being reserved for military and government use), and could be programmed to serve as couriers, seeking out individuals to establish call-links. Unfortunately, their people-ID skills were generally lacking and were only mosy effective when they had pre-existing voice-identification profiles to properly confirm their targets and release secured access to them. MAVACS didn’t last long after the SDF-1 took off, as their commlinks proved too easily hacked, and both the military and civilian markets were increasingly being issued improved cellphone technology instead.

-Public Photographic Recorder Robots(PPRRs, aka ‘Purs’)---These wandering photography robots made their debut shortly before Launch Day, and were released in anticipation of the influx of visitors and tourists on Macross Island. A number of them were allowed to operate after the relocation of Macross City inside the SDF-1, in part to document the experience of the civilians and show the great morale enjoyed by them. PPRRs, however, soon found their way into the service of the SDF-1’s engineers, who, with a little reprogramming and refitting of the ‘bots, could use them to survey and record construction work, and monitor engineering sections. PPRRs all but disappeared from their original roles as time wore on, but survived in the engineering, contracting, and news media sectors of the SDF-1’s society.

-RUTERs(Roving Urban Trash Elimination Robots(aka ‘dust bin bots’, ‘roborats’)--- Arguably the most useful and utilitarian of the urb-bots were these robo-trashcans or mobile dustbins, low-slung wheeled roving robots equiped with a single grasping utility arm. Variants could be fitted with mops and power washer heads in place of the grasper. These robots were typically assigned to patrol specific areas (typically a street or city block) policing up trash and debris, before returning to their recharge ‘warrens’ to empty their trash bins and plug in for battery recharge and programming updates. The RRG had high hopes for the RUTERs, predicting that once out in the open market, they, and variants of them, would quickly shoulder aside such anemic independently Earth-developed efforts such as the Roomba.

Unfortunately, the First Robotech War dashed those hopes of going mainstream, and the entire production run of urb-bots went away with the SDF-1.
Despite their apparent public relations role, the urb-bots were reactivated with the reconstruction of Macross City inside the SDF-1. Part of this was to provide a sense of normalcy for the displaced civilians, but Doctor Lang also re-tasked the urb-bots as mobile environmental sensors, providing a steady flow of data to the SDF-1’s life support control centers on environmental conditions and finding damage and leaks.
Urb-bots were a staple of life on the SDF-1 during its long voyage, despite niggling annoyance with the idiot-drones, and a mounting body of folklore about them(including Petit Cola Machine-tipping, ‘peeping tom robots’, and reports of ‘assassinations’ of particularly annoying machines). Lynn Kyle in particular was said to have personally started the rumor that the urb-bots were being used by the military to spy on the civilian population(this was never proven).
After the Rain of Death and the re-establishment of Macross City on Earth, urb-bots fell out of favor as frivolities, despite the efforts of several residents of MC to reactivate them for purposes of nostaglia. Many were junked, but the majority of them managed to be saved amd transferred, through the caprice of various ex-Macross technicians, to the new orbital communities, especially the Factory Satellite. Though newer models were experimented with on the Satellites, with varying degrees of success and acceptance(Lisa Hayes is reported to have kicked a particularly annoying unit across a room during her wedding preparations), the original Macross urb-bots became collectors’ items amongst the tech-set. The RUTERs especially enjoyed long second lives in their utility role and reportedly even travelled to Tirol with the Pioneer expeditions. Other examples of the original urb-bots have occasionally appeared in corners of the UEEF(the main messhall on the SDF-3 featured a surviving Petit Cola machine, though its original soft drink stock had been long depleted and its mobility disabled), but the category never caught on on Earth, though larger remote control construction and debris removal machines were commonly used in the Reconstruction.

Nice write up. And for the first part.

[taalismn]

Yep, a nod to parkhyun for giving us a new icon of heroic masculinity comic command ineptitude.

[keir451]

I can totally see someone taking a baseball bat to a particularly annoyting Petit Cola machine! Also in Macross Frontier we get to see a Roomba like RUTERS scooping trash into a receptacle in the ground, presumably for recycling.

Nah, the damn thing'd probably start shooting cola cans at you like that 7-Up machine that Jamie from Mythbusters made if you attacked it.

Or how about the Decepticon soda amchine from the Transfromers movie? Evil soda machines anyone?

[Seto Kaiba]

Or how about the Decepticon soda machine from the Transformers movie? Evil soda machines anyone?

I wonder how much Mountain Dew paid for that one... and how much they regret sending the message of their vending machines visiting a bloody retribution on mankind. (Personally, I thought the fact that their drink looks like a laboratory urine specimen was retribution enough.)

I can totally see someone taking a baseball bat to a particularly annoyting Petit Cola machine! Also in Macross Frontier we get to see a Roomba like RUTERS scooping trash into a receptacle in the ground, presumably for recycling.

And then we have missiles with commercial beverage labeling on them.

Ah, yeah... Macross's creators have done that a couple times now. The most notorious being one in DYRL? that was done up to look like a can of Takohai (lit "Octopus Highball"). Supposedly it was the brainchild of Fumio Iida, the movie's assistant animation director, who put them in as an in-joke.

[Seto Kaiba]

Seto, doesn't make it any less fun to poke at with the humor stick.

Just think of it as some executive, somewhere completely missing the point of "aggressive advertising" to the Zentradi.

[taalismn]

Two weeks later the Zentraedi Grand Armada de-folds over the entire Earth.

"Just because you forgot to keep the receipt doesn't give you lot the right to be all phissy on us!"