“These robots are actually turning out to be even more useful than we’d expected.” Alice Murcheson cast a significant look at the robot now threading tubing through the structure of the planter towers, replacing the tubing that had failed. “Quite honestly, I had expected that we’d end up having to find enough techs with both oxygen delivery certifications and the skills to set up that tubing.”
Harlan Lemont’s lips quirked upward into a smile. Not a big grin like a Shep might have given her, but a quiet expression that matched his personality. “Actually, we’d learned quite a bit just from all the work we’d done with the watering bots. Of course that was a lot simpler, which was why we could put kids on the job, but it gave us a lot of expertise in the issues of teleoperation.”
“Which allows us to use someone who understands the structure of the planter towers and the irrigation system, but doesn’t necessarily have oxygen delivery certification.”
“Teleoperation technology’s getting better all the time. Back in the early days, everything was clunky joysticks that might or might not work properly. A lot of the kids were telling me that they’d put the spex and haptic feedback gloves on and it was like they were right there inside the robot. A couple of them said they even had some vertigo when they took their control gear back off.”
Alice considered that information. “Did you have them tell Medlab?”
“I suppose I should’ve thought about it, but at the time it didn’t seem that concerning. I’ve heard of really heavy gamers reporting that kind of experience, and they came out of it in a minute or two, so it didn’t seem like anything too dangerous.” Harlan paused, looked back at the robot hard at work. “But if you think I ought to, I can tell the kids to drop by Medlab and let them know it might be an issue.”