SCMR Chpt 5

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==Chapter 5 - Self Configuring Modular Robot==
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Garrett systems Testing area, airless moon [classified]
Mick Kavosopoulos, Benji Ayerman, and Tara Dreeson had been here for eight months, three people with roughly 100 cubic meters of pressurized habitat, infrequent supply shipments, and several hundred robots the size of a schnauzer dog.
Well, the robots were the size of a schnauzer, most of the time. Lately, the robots have been getting a little smaller, more compact.
Outside the pressurized hab, stockpiles of processed mineral ores were accumulating at the shuttle pad, roughly 30% of what the robots were pulling out of the crust of this moon, but still quite comparable and competitive with surface mining on an inhabited planet with human workers.
...and it's deadly dull. The robots initially would send alerts frequently, requiring the tech team to don suits, hop in an electric rover, and go fix, or help un-stuck the damned things.
but then, that was when there were only a few dozen. Now the robots send a distress, it's logged, and before anyone's put on a suit, other robots show up and free or repair the damaged units.
Like I said, deadly dull stuff. The machines have also been adjusting their own configurations, something that is part of the testing here.
several thousand machines are working, they find the materials, bring them to a central point, where those materials get processed, a portion goes to repairs and a portion goes to the shuttle pad. The shuttle lands, and collects the materials.
Simple and dull.
The things haven't tried to dismantle the equipment since month two's software bug, which was 'cured' by placing directives in the loop on the learning processors.
Still, it's creepy when the crew bother to really consider what might happen if someone jailbreaks the control codes.
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