Jonathan and the gentle Robot

I started to translate some of my books to English: „Jonathan and the gentle Robot“. Google Translator is a good start with that. And I reworked some of the covers and added Illustrations I made with AI tools.

Read about Jonathan and his robot project:

Jonathan had spent the afternoon in the workshop after the cybernetics lectures. Sawing, milling, filing, drilling and tapping filled his afternoon.

He had drawn up the plans for the construction of his project as a study project at the university and his professor had praised them as an example of aesthetic innovation. His savings had been spent on the material, aluminum, steel and plastic, and he had spent nights designing the electronics.

The computer for the controls, the actuators for the joints, communication links and the brain of the machine were the newest on the market, low in power consumption, so that the batteries that were in the fuselage lasted as long as possible and did not recharge after a short time had to be.

All in all, he estimated that he would end up weighing 130 pounds, which was perfectly fine for an average height girl.

Sensors and cameras had been delivered in the mail. Jonathan opened the package and looked at the yield of his purchase. He tried to see if the components fit into the sockets he had brought from the workshop and sorted them with the other parts that lay on the large work table in front of him like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

Again something to tick off the long bill of materials. Soon he had everything he needed for his robot.

Looking at the list, he was pleased to note that the head, neck, and shoulders components were now complete. Now he could start assembling in earnest, gradually adding the missing parts.

But the head was the most important thing, and the brain. Of course, he didn’t want his robot to look like one of the assembly machines that welded or painted cars in the factories of the big manufacturers. He envisioned a human-looking robot that could do more than just do tedious jobs on an assembly line.

He had heard about artificial intelligence in the computer science lecture and knew that he had to deal with it.

The research took Jonathan a few weeks online and many nights in the AI forums, but it was worth it. He had met a lot of cool people who were passionately debating the topic, made contacts with some professionals and research institutes and learned a lot.

Unlike most of his friends, the group members there understood his enthusiasm. „Just find yourself a real girlfriend!“ he often heard, „or buy a silicone sex doll“, one of the scoffers had suggested.

Well, he would have liked a girlfriend, and an inflatable doll was a poor substitute for an inspirational conversationalist.

In his mind he made a list of the qualities his girlfriend should have.

In any case, she had to have personality. A will of one’s own, patience, creativity. Humor was very important to him, but not the kind that was primitive and tasteless. She should be mindful, conscientious, have healthy self-esteem, and exude optimism.

He added gentleness. An old-fashioned word, and yet it expressed clearly what he had in mind.

Well, if she was pretty, it couldn’t hurt, but the usual criteria of long legs, nice hair, and a full bust were pretty low on his list. A friendly, winning smile made every face shine – that was more important than all other externals.

Then he thought about what he wanted to name his android. At first he thought Andrea would be an obvious and appropriate name, but he didn’t like it. Sabine, Rebekka, Tanja, Beatrix, Cornelia, Konstanze – he knew many beautiful first names that he could imagine. Should he just ask her himself?

Eventually he settled on ‚Rebekka‘ and put the name at the top of his list.

I should stop making lists, he thought. Still, he had to think about how he wanted to model her personality. Personality was a matter of people skills, and he didn’t want to create a machine that would only execute commands, cite stored knowledge from the Internet, and engage in mechanical conversation.

He quickly jotted down some notes and continued to work on his electronic toy. A few things remained on his list before he could turn on the power to bring them to life for the first time.

The trickiest problem had been wiring the electronic components. He certainly didn’t want a huge tangle of power lines from the control unit to each individual motor and relocate the sensor. Jonathan therefore decided to place a component in the upper body and pelvis, where he could distribute the power from the batteries hidden in the thighs to the individual modules.

In the next step, he connected the components in the head and shoulders to the distributor in the upper body using plug connections and carefully checked whether the connections worked reliably. After all, he didn’t want to be in for a nasty surprise when he first turned on the power to bring his android to life.

It was well past midnight when he finally finished his work and fell into bed tired.