Information Gathering

Hiss...!

The airtight seal of the gaming pod released a puff of white smoke, and the hatch slowly slid open.

Li Si slowly adjusted to his stiff body, working his shoulders and legs before finally stepping out of the pod.

After clearing his thoughts in class, he had rushed home, locked himself in his bedroom, and logged off. His goal was clear: to search for information on robotic structures and battery technology.

However, he didn't rush to search immediately. Instead, he walked out and wandered for a while before finding a restaurant to sit down in.

Having not logged off to move his body for an entire month, he felt as if his joints were about to rust.

Moreover, while the nutrient solution in the gaming pod provided all the necessary substances for the human body, the sensation of hunger was very real. It was like being on an IV drip—it could sustain life, but it couldn't fill one's stomach.

If the digestive system went without food for too long, it would atrophy. If this continued, his body might collapse before he even unlocked the achievement exchange system.

"Phew... refreshing!"

After wolfing down a whole table of food, Li Si let out a satisfied sigh, leaning back against the table, unwilling to move an inch.

"Old Man Zhang, your stir-fry is still the best. I haven't had it in so long."

Adhering to the fine tradition of a post-meal cigarette, he slumped in his seat for a long while before heading to the counter to pay. He held up a finger to the wrinkled shop owner.

"If you want to eat it, come more often. Where have you been hiding? I haven't seen a shadow of you lately."

Old Man Zhang chuckled while counting the bills, then pulled out some change and handed it to Li Si.

"Just busy with some nonsense. I'll definitely come by more often when I have time!"

Li Si chatted briefly as he took the change, then stopped wasting time and headed straight home to search for the information he needed on his computer.

Classic Mechanical Structure Diagrams

Robotic Arm Optimization and Modification

Introduction to Rational Power Distribution

Beginner's Manual: DIY Reinforced Lithium Battery

Graphene Battery Structure Analysis

With a few simple searches, Li Si downloaded article after article and book after book that he felt would be useful, many of which even included video tutorials.

The development of humanoid robots in the real world wasn't very advanced, but various industrial and civilian robots were quite well-developed. At the very least, robots for tasks like transport and handling were already quite common.

As for military robots, he hadn't really seen any deployed yet. It wasn't that they couldn't be made, but rather that the cost-effectiveness wasn't there.

Things like robots or even mechanical exoskeletons might seem impressive and high-end, but their production costs were far higher than conventional weapons.

The money spent on building one war robot would be better spent on building more planes and tanks, or increasing the benefits and pensions to recruit more soldiers and manufacture more firearms.

After all, human labor was the cheapest cost in this society. A person with a gun, after a period of training, was a combat force that could be sent to the battlefield.

On this Earth, which lacked supernatural powers, there wasn't much difference between the power of a gun and a robot; a single bullet could do whatever a robot could do to take someone down.

Additionally, fault tolerance was an issue. On the battlefield, it wasn't about having the most power; it was about having enough fault tolerance and adaptability to handle complex environments. The more precise a machine was, the more prone it was to failure—an unavoidable problem.

As far as Li Si knew, if the real Earth wanted to truly apply robot and mechanical exoskeleton technology to the military, it would likely take a few more years. And that would only happen because Earth OL had produced too many players with overwhelming individual combat power, forcing their hand.

Of course, that wasn't something he needed to worry about. The only thing he needed to consider now was designing his own robot to deal with the various monsters that would frequently appear in the game.

After downloading a mountain of data, Li Si opened a thread on the forum and uploaded it all at once. He planned to read it slowly after logging back into the game; with the intelligence and knowledge bonuses in the game, it would be much faster than rote memorization in reality.

In any case, this information was common knowledge, and the forum had a feature to set reading permissions. He could simply set it to "visible only to me," so he didn't have to worry about causing any trouble.

Lying back into the gaming pod, the scene shifted, and he returned to the familiar bedroom.

Li Si opened the forum, browsing the data he had uploaded while sketching drafts in his notebook, comparing them to his own ideas.

The biggest difficulty in designing a robot like a Transformer wasn't the structure itself, but the transformation mechanism. Ensuring that all parts functioned normally while performing complex shape-shifting was no easy task.

However, it was a hurdle he had to overcome. He was designing this robot for self-defense and as a source of conventional combat power; he couldn't exactly carry a robot around the streets—that would be far too flashy and conspicuous.

A Transformer capable of freely switching between a car and a robot was clearly the best solution to this problem.

In reality, if he had a choice, he would rather have loyal subordinates and firearms, but he lacked the capital for that. Besides, ordinary people could hardly stand against large-scale monsters like Dr. Lizard or the Hulk.

Back to the point.

The transformation structure of a Transformer could actually draw inspiration from the movies of his past life. Of course, he wouldn't be foolish enough to imitate those purely visual effects where parts flew around randomly, but the layout of the car parts after transformation was a great reference.

As he wrote and drew, a sketch modeled after the appearance of Bumblebee from the Transformers was born.

Of course, this was just the exterior. The specific internal structure and dimensions had to be designed from scratch. He didn't have the "black technology" from the movies where car parts could overlap and somehow increase in volume.

Li Si's plan was to design in layers: first determine the general appearance, then design the transformation structure, and finally, after perfecting the mechanism for each part, refine the specific composition of every component.

The night passed quickly in focused thought, and an exhausted Li Si didn't even know when he had fallen asleep.

The next morning, his internal clock, honed over more than a month, woke him up early. However, due to his extreme fatigue, he indulged in a rare few minutes of lying in bed before finally dragging himself up.

After washing up, the first thing he did wasn't to head to school, but to rush to the electronics mall to buy a high-performance laptop, retiring the "old clunker" that had come with the system.

After last night's lesson, he realized that relying solely on mental simulation to design a transformation structure was unrealistic—at least, not with his current intelligence. He decided to use software to build 3D models so he could have a more intuitive concept.