Core Robot

Henry brought home Kitty, a male tiger Tiger given a feminine name, but without the original Tiger cage. The reason was simple: the car couldn't fit it.

That thing was built to the standards of an adult Tiger; thick iron bars, heavy weight, and especially its enormous size. Unless it's transported by truck, Henry's little Cadillac can forget about it.

He placed the listless Tiger cub in the passenger seat and secured it slightly with the seatbelt. From its initial struggles to its current quiet state, Henry, based on his reading of veterinary books, roughly judged that the Tiger, besides being hungry, was likely also dehydrated.

It's clear that after capturing the tiger cub, the poachers not only failed to feed it properly, but also didn't give it much water.

Henry didn't stop along the way and drove straight back to his rented apartment. Just before going upstairs, old Gary, who was Sun Pharma, saw him holding the little Tiger.

"Henry!" old Gary called out.

"Yes, Gary. What's wrong?"

What are you holding?

"Ah, this is the Tabby Cat Kitty. Kitty, come on, say hello. This is Gary." Henry pulled on the tabby's paw and gestured for it to wave.

He then added, "I know we said we couldn't keep pets, but this kitten is homeless and pitiful. Could you make an exception?"

Henry said this because old Gary's principles weren't actually that strict. He was quite lenient with the apartment's residents.

Of course, this is also related to Henry's prompt payment of rent, never delaying, and his occasional food deliveries, indicating a good relationship with him.

From a distance, where he couldn't see very clearly, old Gary waved his hand and said, "Alright. But you have to clean up your own poop. You can't let people urinate or defecate anywhere in the hallway or anywhere else."

"If anyone complains to me, there's no room for leniency. If it goes into heat and meows wildly in the middle of the night, I'll have to send it out into the street to find other male cats. Understand?"

Old Gary was mistaking the little guy in Henry's arms for a mother cat. Henry, of course, didn't bother to explain, but instead replied, "No problem. It won't cause any trouble for anyone else."

"Yes, that's right, so as not to cause trouble for others." Old Gary waved him away. California autumn always made him feel drowsy.

"I'm going upstairs now," Henry said, and went upstairs by himself.

As soon as I entered, a snowman-like spherical robot rolled to my feet. It performed a biometric scan and suddenly emitted a high-frequency alarm sound that was inaudible to the average person.

An unidentified object has intruded.

This is some kind of encrypted high-frequency sound; warning signals are often delivered in this way. This is to prevent unauthorized intruders from noticing that this seemingly toy-like spherical robot has issued a warning.

Henry, this Kryptonian, preferred to sneak in rather than scare people away with a loud alarm.

The core robot, codenamed BB, has a plastic shell with no fancy patterns or colors. Overall, it looks like a child's roly-poly toy.

The only difference is that the bottom half of this spherical toy rolls, allowing the robot to run all over the place.

The reason for not using metal is, of course, because plastic is lightweight. Lighter weight means you don't need a high-power motor, and the battery life can be extended.

Although Henry has unlocked the technological potential of lithium iron phosphate batteries, this thing is ultimately not a miniature Arc Reactor; it still needs to be charged. And with charging comes the issue of electricity costs.

Henry was quite restrained in his behavior so that his electricity bill wouldn't be too much higher than that of an average household and would attract too much attention.

Otherwise, draining the power out of the area instantly wouldn't have made it much harder for him to do what he wanted.

On the other hand, the shape of these plastic toys can reduce the vigilance of intruders. Despite old Gary guarding the first floor, no one in the building has ever been burgled.

The robot's control program is not Artificial Intelligence. Such a self-learning program requires a certain level of computing power, which current computer equipment is not yet capable of. Henry simply wrote a set of methods to deal with most situations.

So after hearing the warning sound from the core robot BB, Henry immediately issued the command in the same high-frequency voice.

"BB, log in as a new level 2 user, username Kitty."

A new Level 2 user, Kitty, has logged in. Please provide a DNA sample as soon as possible. "Welcome, Kitty."

BB's voice is a very stiff, electronically synthesized voice. It's not that I didn't want to use a gentle, older sister's voice, but that would require extra computing resources to combine sentences and express tone and attitude.

Moreover, electronic sounds have a strange appeal to people of Henry's generation.

As for high-frequency voice dialogue, it comes with advanced privileges. Even if an outsider detects it, they still need to crack the encryption method. After cracking it, they still need to identify languages that are not based on Western systems to understand the content, and then obtain advanced privileges in the same way.

With several safeguards in place, Henry didn't want to set up any additional user IDs and passwords. Why bother with periodic changes?

Such anti-human designs will only deter forgetful users, not those with ulterior motives.

It's fair to say that during this period, Henry's most dedicated work was building this voice control system. Just figuring out how to make the Mike distinguish between ambient human voices and sounds coming from the television set took a lot of effort.

Then, after receiving a voice command, how is it converted into instructions that the machine can understand? How has the method of voice command recognition evolved from precise judgment to fuzzy judgment?

Even when using a distorted voice or an unusual way of speaking, the command can still be triggered. It is through meticulous adjustments to the details that we have achieved today's results.

In fact, at this stage, although the system is not built primarily with Artificial Intelligence programs, it still utilizes big data analytics to achieve these functions.

High-frequency voice dialogue is for the highest-level user with advanced privileges, allowing them to modify underlying confidential information.

Henry himself was a Level 1 user, with full access to all command functions.

Level 2 users only have access to some command functions, which are pending activation. Currently, only Kitty, the little Tiger, is at this level. Considering the possibility that I might not be home in the future, and that BB will have to prepare Kitty's meals, I will grant some functions as appropriate.

Currently, only Old Gary is logged in as a visitor. BB will not issue a warning when he enters. There are no lethal defenses inside the house; only the security cameras automatically activate upon unauthorized entry.

Setting up deadly traps in a rented house, especially an ordinary apartment, would be going too far. Besides, the tighter the security, the more important the contents seem to be. Henry didn't leave any priceless treasures at his rented place.

For example, my Black Clinic in South Los Angeles was frequently burglarized when it first opened. Now...

That's a place that even cockroaches and rats avoid. It's just because people can come and go as they please, and there's nothing there that can be sold.

After logging in as a new user and greeting the new user, BB rolled back to its charging dock. For now, this core robot can only perform cleaning tasks via an external arm. Henry hasn't designed many other functions yet.

So Henry poured a big bowl of water for the little Tiger. Then he took out three large steaks from the Fridge and fried them, intending for Kitty to have one.

Henry hadn't figured out whether to feed them raw or cooked food. He decided to just let them eat the same cooked food as him.

The only concern is that Tiger are carnivores. They can't eat what humans eat like dogs. Tiger don't have a good enough ability to digest starch, so eating too many plants or grains will only cause indigestion.

Now we really need to work hard to earn money, otherwise we won't be able to support this little darling.