It's a group effort.

[John Locke]

When he had said his life seemed to revolve around one meeting or the other John really hadn't been joking. It didn't matter which planet he was on, there was always a meeting of some kind. Although, if he was honest, this one was better than most of them. At the least, there was a view here, the meeting room which had been set aside for them in the middle of Silver Rest was set high up enough in the temple that they had a nice view down to the gardens and then out to the forest beyond, and there was, even better, the actual smell of a planet rather than the bland scent of a space station this time.

Stifling a stretch John reached across the table for a piece of the cake that had been dropped off by an increasingly harried looking chef. It was only one slive, and he'd be good all the way home too, that was allowed right? "The building is easy," he allowed as a summation to the last discussion on a new series of war droids. "I can probably have a prototype ready by the next meeting," An unsure look, almost furtive danced across John's face as he glanced around, "Actually, speaking of prototypes, and since the meeting is basically over...I was hoping you guys could help me with something."

A flick of a finger cleared the projector so he could speak, "I was at a clinic last week, repairing droids for people who can't afford normal services, and I came across a pretty interesting example. Someone had let their droid wander into a hive of insects and they'd got inside the chassis, actually shorting out the droid. I know we can't actually carry around hives to throw at people, but I'd never considered how effective something so small could be and thought it could somehow be weaponised. I just haven't been able to figure out how beyond a few crazy ideas. Exploding bees aren't really the kinda thing I wanna be messing with."

[member="Matsu Ike"] | [member="Jyoti Nooran"]

 

[Matsu Ike]

[member="John Locke"]

Normally she would have Anaara there but the jedi master had free time. After everything that had been happening well she had gotten a better chance to really work on things.. She had returned from the great library and seen what was really a treat... Work crews were heading out there to see it and try to restore what they could. She had seen the tear of the elder and a handful of othr artifacts that went a long way to recovering information about the past.. so working to help someone that Noriko had said was helpful if a litle out of place in a previous meeting. "An interesting take, micro droids for sbotage have been used before but they can be costly. Even the sentinel droids we developed for hacking and slicing with infiltration are only so good compared to larger ones. You need the space to hold the proer power source and tools."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Between Tal and potentially another padawan, with one Arax Dorn that has yet to decide between several potential masters, or otherwise not yet ready for padawan-hood, she couldn't help but imagine what's appealing in her for Arax, probably because Arax somehow perceives Jessica as a knowledge source, what makes Zardu a good fit for her as a master. In the meantime, Jessica could trust the army bureaucracy in full and attend that meeting on something that might be of interest to the Army: ammunition filled with miniature buzz droids. Of course, as far as Ringo was concerned, she didn't actually need to be present often because Marcia essentially ran that business as a stewardess. She might have met [member="Matsu Ike"] on one occasion, in the Omega Crisis, but never met [member="John Locke"] or [member="Jyoti Nooran"] in person. She was about to, and today's topic was... miniature buzz droids. Interesting: I would probably use similar power cells to what's in use in pacemakers. However, I'm aware that power cells will often be the determinant of the mini-droids' shelf life, she thought, while recalling what she does know about that might be relevant to the design of miniature buzz droids.

"Hello everyone. I'm Jessica; to the extent I think we could use power cells similar to those used in pacemakers used by some species for the elderly that might be at risk of heart problems, and those pacemakers need a long powerpack lifespan while simultaneously having to be small in size, I'm not entirely sold on that solution"

 

[Eugen Aker]

Jyoti nodded along as John made his introductions and presented his ideas for a new kind of weaponized micro-drone. She had a good bit of experience in this area, having operated and studied similar products from Archangel and KSA, both firms heavily invested in droid production.

She was interested to hear about all the ideas the John had for the micro-drones he envisioned, but then Matsu brought up the issue of miniaturization and powering the droids. Jessica chimed in next with possible solutions involving the use of power cells. She wasn't all the concerned about these problems while they were still in the concept stage.

"KSA has been toying with the used of smart-munitions for precision attacks. Their latest foray into the field was the Salamander, which are micro-drones that attack targets much like insect hive that damaged that droid in your story. It seems like the similar idea you had, but closer to weaponized sparkbees. Do I have that right?"

[member="John Locke"] [member="Matsu Ike"] [member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Salmakk]

Salmakk quietly listened as the others discussed droids. Like several of the others, corporate benevolence had taken the mon calamari away from his office on Hast. While he initially had been skeptical of Gir sending him and team of technicians to help rebuild the parts of Kashyyyk damaged by the Sith Empire, he had been pleasantly surprised by the exposure of different and intriguing ideas brainstormed by the others affiliated with the Silver Jedi. Now if it could only be a little more humid here...He waited for [member="Jyoti"] to stop speaking before he cleared his gravelly throat.

"Gentlebeings, my name is Salmakk, a starship engineer of Lucerne Labs. You may know my adopted brother, Gir Quee, a little bit more," said Salmakk, briefly introducing himself, "back to the original question by Mister [member="John Locke"]. I am not a droid engineer, but I work with them from time to time with starships. One of my favorites is the H-1ME, which is just small enough to fit into an average toolbox. I can carry that thing almost anywhere...but excuse, for I digress. Aside from the question posed by my colleague Miss Jyoti here, I am curious as to how small of a droid we are talking about, or perhaps I should say, what this droid would be working on? I think that may help be understand Miss [member="[/COLOR]Jessica Med-Beq[COLOR=rgb(106,90,205)]"]'s and Miss [member="[/COLOR]Matsu Ike[COLOR=rgb(106,90,205)]"]'s inputs, assuming that we are all in the same pool...errr...page of understanding of the basic requirements for this proposed droid?"

[]

 

[John Locke]

John nodded thankfully at Salmakk as he spoke, reminding the man of the original topic of discussion. "That's a good question, the honest truth is I'm just winging this right now. The bugs swarmed the original droid I found, they were small enough to slip between the chinks in the armour, to get in where no-one ever thought something could fit. So I'm thinking it would have to be something that small," he nodded at the Mon Calamari, "I like the idea, something like the H-1ME only..." One of John's fingers tapped against the desk, the metal and wood making a dull thud as they clicked together. "It couldn't have the flexibility of the H-1ME, we'd need it to be a lot more specialised than that because of the size." John fell silent, his gaze staring across the table without actually seeing anything. Slowly he re-oriented, pointing at Matsu, "What if we do what you said, can we use them to slice somehow? Coul we find a way around the space issue?"

[member="Salmakk"] | [member="Jyoti Nooran"] | [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] | [member="Matsu Ike"]

 

[Matsu Ike]

[member="John Locke"] [member="Salmakk"] [member="Jyoti Nooran"] [member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

Matsu was listening and when it came back to her she spoke. "It is possible, you just have to know where to look. Specificaly for similar technology that is already in use and can be observed." She said it and motioned with her hand while she was bringing up a view of several planets. "The Utegetu Nebula is soemthing the jedi discovered centuries ago. uninhabited, lush and essentially a paradise. Its star went super nova at some point and the worlds survived... if anything they thrived because of the technology that was on the world. Protecting the planet at the molecular level. Trillions of tiny machines that can get anywhere and rebuild entire worlds. Main problem encountered with them is, their location on the worlds is hard to nearly impossible to detect and if you encounter them they disassemble anything foreign to the planet. This includes people and technology for containment or collection. Makes collecting some of them hard to study." She said it and knew it was a dangerous place and one of the reasons why the fizz was regarded and avoided.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"The idea of miniaturizing the computer cores will be necessary, and it has to be networked, with tiny optronic processors, such as used for miniaturized medical equipment or RFIDs, to the extent slicing involves activities that can be parallelizable, at the data, task or instruction levels. However, you would be sacrificing communication range by doing so, simply because of the low signal power, so droids would have to stay close to one another"

If I could get a computer mainframe to fit into a series of nodes scattered throughout a ship, with each node being the size of a human baby's shoebox, then it might be possible to apply the same logic on smaller scales, she thought, while being reminded that the level of parallelism involved is usually understood to be data-level parallelism or instruction/task-level parallelism. Yes, Jessica knew [member="Matsu Ike"] when slicing the Rogue One Sith's systems to get schematics on hand, but that doesn't mean she has the right to assume [member="Jyoti Nooran"], [member="John Locke"] or [member="Salmakk"] would actually know where parallelizability fits in the design of slicer droids. Much like sentients' neurons, like hers, were bit-level parallel in her mind. Just that it did cross her mind that several of the components were also used and mass-produced for other products that were commonly used - and she was aware that, as the number of components in the network increased, the more they could get out of the network of slicer droids, so the question is: how many insect-sized droids would be necessary to accomplish what one regular slicing droid can do?

"One caveat: droids that size would need several of them in a wireless network to actually be able to replicate the processing power and functions of one regular slicing droid"

 

[Salmakk]

Salmakk pondered over [member="John Locke"]'s questions as [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] and [member="Matsu Ike"]. Gir would doubtlessly be enthralled by Master Ike's revelation...exploring a nebula would be right up his alley. His mind turned from the talk of nebula to Ms. Med-beq's comments on computer technology. Salmakk's own understanding of electronics at that level was basic and he didn't have much to add to that discourse. He eyed the blonde woman placidly. I bet Azira would have a lively conversation with her...Salmakk carefully considered the woman's thoughts.

"There are any number of work-arounds to the issue of processing power," mused Salmakk, "Miss Med-Beq suggested networking, which from my limited understanding of the field, seems like the most likely and conventional means of obtaining a large amount of computer processing power. But I would submit that this may actually be an issue that is less of a method of operation, and more of a matter of cost. Positronic processors are quite powerful and quite small, but also extremely expensive. Another option may be to use a number of really basic, automated slicing tool programs. These would not require a lot of power or exceptionally advanced computers to run, but they probably would not be as effective as well-written and versatile intregated slicing program."

 

[Eugen Aker]

As the discussion continued, Jyoti now had a better idea of want John wanted. Not something overtly destructive like the Salamanders, but something more subversive in nature.

"From the sounds of it, what you're really seeking is a restraining bolt with wings," she concluded. "Using this technology, it would be a simple matter to assume guidance over the droid once a physical control point was penetrated by our hypothetical drone. Why don't we call it the 'Stinger' for now?"

"If you're assuming control or slicing a droid or small machine on the hardware level, then you won't need much processing power for that, especially if you're simply bypassing the onboard processing to take over motor functions. In the event you do need to slice, processing could always be offloaded to some kind of master unit like a central control computer or a server farm. The Stingers themselves could simply function as high bandwidth transceivers to interface with the target machine."

"As for the power issue, there are plenty of affordable materials out there with a very high energy density, like diatium. After the initial connection, the Stinger could tap into the power source of the target machine to keep itself powered for extended periods."

[member="Salmakk"] [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] [member="Matsu Ike"] [member="John Locke"]

 

[John Locke]

John sat back in his chair, fingers still thrumming their beat on the tabletop as he considered the points raised by the others around the table, his eyes staring at the wall without really seeing it. "And if we wanted to use a wireless network to work on a swarm networking system then each of the drones would need to be big enough to support the communications gear as well as any processors that it might have to carry. I'm not sure that would accomplish what we're trying to do without first compromising the ability of the drones to move without being shot down. I think General Nooran might be onto something. I'd love to create a fully independent swarm, the cost to deploy something like that, to deploy it would be significant. If you built it properly though...." The man lapsed into silence for a moment, imagining a swarm of robots each carrying out a specialised function. "I think that's something that we can work on for later," he finally allowed, tearing his mind back from the tangent it had been drifting down.

"I do love the idea of the swarm of droids able to do anything, but if we gave them a very specialised purpose, to provide access to the hardware then we could push off the actual heavy duty processing, the slicing to another unit couldn't we? A large droid brain, all it would need to do is create the means for it to reach out and touch the units we're trying to compromise. Let the drones themselves only carry the most basic of slicing of tools, just enough to get them basic access, like you said, you don't need much more than a basic restraining bolt level of tech, but if it carries a commlink, even if it's not a secure one then that's all it'll take to give a more powerful machine access to the battlefield. A mix of cheap and ease of use with the high technology we all love so much."

[member="Jyoti Nooran"] | [member="Salmakk"] | [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] | [member="Matsu Ike"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Much like I can get behind a swarm of bots equipped with basic, miniaturized slicing tools slaved to a master computer that will then handle the more computationally-intensive tasks. If the communications are unencrypted, it may pose risks for counter-slicing, and even compromise the master computer, but do you feel signal encryption is worth the cost? I get that basic restraining bolts would be a cost-saving measure however"

There is no going around the issue of jamming when trying to slice using remote-controlled equipment, she thought. There was a reason why comms are encrypted: a prepared enemy could counter-slice through unencrypted comms. [member="John Locke"] must have realized as much on Kuat, much as she did as far back as when she attempted to slice the Rogue One Sith's technical databases. [member="Salmakk"], on the other hand, pointed out that cost was the main issue with going with the smaller-scale implementation of an item similar to the ship-wide neural net that is in use among every capital ship Ringo produces. [member="Jyoti Nooran"] talks about diatium, the very same sort of battery in lightsabers, but, while lightsabers are usually powered by diatium, these batteries are seemingly eternal because of something called the dimetris circuit, which allows self-recharge (albeit not perfect of course unless used in a pure vacuum because the losses of energy in a lightsaber are due to it hitting objects, even gases or liquids). On the other hand, perhaps [member="Matsu Ike"] would have an idea that comes after the discussion of computer processing power.

"Maybe we could have the master computer fitted with an ECCM if we want it to lessen the impact of jamming signals between the restraining bolts and the master computer, such as a communications de-scrambler"

 

[Matsu Ike]

Matsu looked at the ones who were there discussing it and she paid more attention then just cutting in. She waited for a moment. "What you want to do is possible but it is not easy." She waited for a moment and focused with some of the force to make a small illusion in the air in front of her. A triangle with three things, cost, ease and quality. "THis is something I was taught a long time ago, you can generally pick two fo the three here. If you want something easy to use and with higher quality you are going to need a lot more funding, if you want it easy and cheaper then the materials won't be as high quality." THe jedi master moved it back. "Making a micro droid like this is possible, my engineers are skilled enough to do it but barring some fo the kybek technology being found in working order. miniaturizing better slicing tools can be hard."

 

[Salmakk]

Salmakk pondered the other's thoughts and simultaneously attempted to search for something on the net with his data-pad. But like many compromises, he found that he couldn't do both of actions together very well. Yet he managed to listen enough to piece together most of the conversation after finally finding what he was looking for. He waited for [member="Matsu Ike"] to finish before he jumped in.

"No matter what route is decided upon, there will always be a corresponding issue that follows it. If the perfect technology existed, it would long be universal by now after the thousands of years that droids have existed for. Just something to consider as we bat around ideas. With that said, Mr. Locke reminded me of something that my brother once talked about. Now I have found it."

Salmakk tapped a button his datapad, causing its miniature holo-projector to produce a hum before light coalesced to form a pair of drastically different droids. One appeared to be a squat, animal quadriped while the other appeared to be roughly humanoid with a grossly distended belly:

"This is a RHTC-560 Hunter Trainer Droid and its drone. Rather than simply a single droid to do a process, the 560 itself acts as a mobile control unit to up to 10 drone units. It may be worth considering these droids' setup as a collective team as yet another possible avenue."

[member="John Locke"] | [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] | [member="Jyoti Nooran"]

 

[John Locke]

John had been taking notes as the others spoke, jotting down the ideas as the other engineers and inventors around the table came up with them, filling pages and pages with notes. "So...it seems that the best plan is not to build a miniaturized slicer in its own right but if we go along the route of the central core then," he nodded as Jessica, "You're right, an open unencrypted comms system would be too vulnerable to counter hacking. But if we include a secure comm unit on the droid, that's going to increase the size of the drones too isn't it." He poked at the tablet in front of him before he looked up, "Just how much processing can we offload to an external unit? I recently came into possession of some droid brains that run in parallel, dropping tasks from one to the other, Couldn't we do something similar, have a network of droid brains designed to operate the drones and fly them and others to do the slicing, the drones themselves would just be tools then, just like with the hunter trainer you mentioned," he nodded at Salmakk. "It would limit the range significantly though, making that ECCM even more important to protect itself."

The man glanced down at the tablet and reached up to rub at his head, a sigh escaping his lips, "Who'd have thought trying to miniaturise a concept would be so difficult?" He dark eyes flicked up to nod at Matsu, "Your engineers must be something, we've never tried to miniturize anything to this level before. It's honestly a lot more complicated than I thought, I figured there would be trade-offs, but nothing this massive."

[member="Salmakk"] | [member="Matsu Ike"] | [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] | [member="Jyoti Nooran"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"And we're back with a somewhat different way of implementing what I was suggesting earlier, with external droid brains rather than drones performing the parallelizable work. What worked for me, if external droid brains are the order of the day, was to network those brains about 30-50m, maybe even 10-20m apart if the signal strength is not that high, with ECCM units being regularly spaced, even though not all of the units will actually have those fitted, or at least not the same ECCM equipment on all of it. So that, in fact, we could use that system for ECCM even if we're not slicing"

So what John suggested was, in fact, not much different from the ship-wide neural net, beyond the ECCM, she thought, with [member="John Locke"] and [member="Salmakk"] having their own set of ideas, and her trying hard to reconcile it all, especially with [member="Matsu Ike"] talking about the latest in miniaturized slicing tools. Because of the wireless nature of those ship-wide neural nets in use by now, she would find herself well-positioned to take advantage of that sort of items, except perhaps [member="Jyoti Nooran"] might have another idea. Yes, of course, she knew better than to dismiss anybody's ideas out of hand, just that it was getting harder on her own computational power to follow up on the merits of each of those ideas and how much of each should be implemented, acknowledging that no single idea will be implemented in full. And then she was having another set of thoughts about somebody whose name took a while to circulate in the Force: Azira... I bet that person must have quite a bit of computational power, perhaps enough to consider training that person if Azira was a FU, and not simply in mechu-deru, she thought.