Silver Lineworks
Silver Lineworks is an engineering and robotics design holding company formed in 2015 and based in Casterratti, Thessia Province and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Quicksilver Industries under its 'QS Innovations' division. Silver Lineworks is best known for its "Situational Reconnaissance Unit" of semi-autonomous humanoid robotic machines used in classified military operations. It also produces machines of varying degrees of autonomy under contract from military drones to advanced artificial intelligence for tech companies and 3D simulations. The company is a pioneer in the field of robotics and it is one of the most advanced in its domain.
| Type | Subsidiary of Quicksilver Industries |
|---|---|
| Industry |
|
| Founded | 21 April 2015 |
| Headquarters | Casterratti, Thessia Province, Caphiria |
| Key people | Adamo Castagnola
(President & Project Director) |
| Revenue | $11.6 billion (2030) |
| Number of employees | 8,500 (2030) |
| Parent | Quicksilver Industries |
| Divisions |
|
| Website | silverlineworks.com |
Adamo Castagnola is the lead project manager and President, overseeing the major contracts and projects the company takes on. He has been extremely vocal regarding the advancements of robotics and artificial intelligence and has been proclaimed "Rex Robotixa", King Robot by numerous media outlets.
Recently, the company has made efforts to enter the consumer market and has revealed several programmable robotics that are in pre-production and preparing for commercial availability within the next ten years.
Contents
- 1 History
- 2 Products
- 2.1 MPDU
- 2.2 FEDYA
- 2.3 Crowby
- 2.4 Templar Project
- 3 See also
History
Between 2001 and 2014, Quicksilver Industries began an aggressive acquisition spree to gain a foothold in the emerging robotics field, absorbing 14 robotics and engineering companies in total. The most notable acquisition was Edon Guraziu - a world-renowned engineer - and his engineering team Edon Guraziu Engineering. This, along with two other strategic investments in TAKURA Robotics and Zinoviy Enterprises helped position Quicksilver Industries as a leader in robotics.
In 2015, QSI decided that it needed to centralize its robotics division as it was inefficient to manage. Silver Lineworks was formed as a result of this restructuring process and became the de facto holding company for all of its robotic engineering interests. Adamo Castagnola, a senior project manager at TAKURA Robotics, was promoted to President of Silver Lineworks in early 2016 as well as having the title of 'Global Project Director'.
Silver Lineworks currently consists of 8 primary engineering firms and 5 research & development teams; each firm has its own project manager who reports directly to Castagnola, who in turn reports to the head of QS Innovations.
Products
MPDU
The active MPDU lineup
The MPDU (Multi Purpose Deployment Unit) is a series of semi-autonomous battle-ready robots. There are three variants, each equipped with a specific set of detachable arms and set of "rules" that govern how it operates.
The A-Type is designed for active duty combat and is fit with one general-purpose machine gun on its right arm capable of firing 7.62×51mm rounds in ball, tracer and rubber variants. It's left arm is weaponless but features what is called a Shadow Hand. With 20 actuated degrees of freedom, absolute position and force sensors, and ultra sensitive touch sensors on the fingertips, the hand provides unique capabilities for problems that require the closest approximation. The Hand also has additional 4 under-actuated movements for a total of 24 joints. Each joint has a movement range again the same as or very close to that of a human hand, including the thumb and even the flex of the palm for the little finger. With 129 sensors in total, the Hand provides detailed telemetry, which can be exploited to generate innovative manipulation control systems or to provide detailed understanding of the external environment. As well as absolute position sensing for each joint the Hand includes force sensing for each actuator, tactile sensing on fingertips, temperature and motor current and voltage sensing. All of this data is made available to the Command Tower from 100Hz and up to 1kHz via a high bandwidth EtherCAT interface. Supporting this high frequency for data is the fast movement of the hand – from open to closed in 0.3 seconds. It also features four custom AGM-176 Griffin missiles in place of a "head", designed for precision low-collateral damage. Directly below this, however, are the multitude of sensors and cameras that allow the MPDU to have some autonomy.
The B-Type machine is designed for heavy combat and features two 7.62×51mm general-purpose machine guns, foregoing the Shadow Hand. The four AGM-176 Griffin missiles have been upgraded to fire nuclear missiles as well. The B-Type also has reinforced steel plates in key vulnerable areas and has an upgraded targeting system.
The C-Type machine is also known as Scout-U due to its streamlined design and lack of offensive weapons. It has Shadow Hands on both of its arms and the head region has been stripped of the missile housing, instead containing a large, loud speaker flanked by a pair of flashing sirens on its shoulder. While it does not have autonomous communicative abilities, it is able to project the voice from its Command Tower and utilize its onboard cameras and sensors in real time. In some of the more prominent cities of Caphiria and around the world, the C-Type machine has been deployed in the local police force and has proven to be extremely effective.
FEDYA
The 06-T9 at a Zinoviy Test Site.
The 06-T9 also known as "FEDYA" is the alpha unit of the Zinoviy Enterprise robots. This machine is still in development and not ready to be sent in the battlefield. The ultimate goal for 06-T9 is to "be the best assault support system during land missions and drastically reduce the need for human infantry during select missions". The 06-T9 is being designed to go anywhere soldiers and marines go on foot. The development of the first unit took over 36 months and a team of the best engineers and scientists from the top institutions in the world.
The cost of a single unit has been estimated to be close to US$700 million.
Crowby
A photo from one of the leaked documents of Crowby-44
The Type-44 Heavy Artillery Robot also known as Crowby-44 is a project still in development and little is known about it other than a few leaked documents. The documents describe Crowby-44 as "a giant heavy machine gun on legs" and from the photos in the document, that is a true statement.
Crowby-44 is at least ten feet tall and weighs over 800 pounds; the most recent iteration features a heavy machine gun that fires custom .950 JDJ rounds.Loaded .950 JDJ cases are approximately the length of an empty .50 BMG casing (i.e., 4 in or 10 cm), and are based on a 20×102mm case shortened and necked up to accept the .950 in (24.1 mm) bullet. Projectiles are custom-made and most commonly weigh 3,600 grains (230 g) which is 8.2 ounces or over half a pound. The cartridge propels its 3,600 gr (230 g) bullet at approximately 2,200 ft/s (670 m/s). This yields a muzzle energy of 38,685 ft·lbf (52,450 J) and a momentum of 154.1 Newton-seconds, about the same as a 20×102mm Vulcan round.
Older versions of Crowby-44 show a seat on top of the machine, indicating that soldiers can mount and ride the machine. Based on documents, the ideas was scrapped because of the intense recoil from the weapon, which caused major injuries during internal testing.
Templar Project
The culmination of famed robotics engineer Edon Guraziu's career is The Templar Project. In his own words, Guraziu has said, "Templar is more than my final engineering project before retirement. It's more than just the largest, the most expensive, the longest project in development...Templar represents a schism in the grand development of humanity, a schism that will define the next step in our race."
In the broadest sense, the Templar Project is a multi-faceted engineering project that aims to create the world's first synthetic organism with true full artificial intelligence. The project started over thirty years ago and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars since its inception and will continue well after project lead Edon Guraziu retires. While the Templar Project has one clear purpose, it is actually hundreds of "micro-projects" that drive the progress forward. There are obvious technological hurdles involved, namely in artificial intelligence. The micro-projects help to tackle the scope of the project, focusing on smaller and more actionable things such as building a framework and robotic skeleton that will become the basis of the machine, as well as things like getting limb articulation correct.
Many of Silver Lineworks' existing projects serve as working prototypes for specific mini-projects, a notable example is the Shadow Hand, which continues to be iterated on for the specific purpose of the Templar Project. Another major milestone that was reached occurred in 2014 when a team from Caterpillar Robotics created a human skull replica created by programmed nanomachines. The notable advancement was made with regard to the "brain" of the skull, which taps into a neural network that in turn is directly linked to the Internet. By learning and studying from hundreds of websites, sources and IxTube videos, the "brain" (composed of a custom nanotube compound) is able to analyze patterns and create a semi-autonomous "thought" and make very rudimentary human-like decisions.
The most recent milestone was the completion of the EE-06 Smart Skin. The Smart Skin is not one "skin", but dozens of smaller skins and components designed to mimic the look, feel, and texture of human-like skin and at the same time provide the necessary reinforcements on top of the skeleton to ensure stability. Made from high-quality Fullerene-intrinsically conducting polymers and a superalloy multi-function structure, the Smart Skin is the product of a dozen combinations of technologies and while very little is known about the Smart Skin, it has passed basic stability testing and is able to withstand temperatures up to 600 degrees and does not compress until a minimum of 600 lbs of force.
A render of the latest Templar Shadow Hand
The AH Skull
The EE-06 Smart Skin