Sarah Catherine wasted little time in settling into her new life at Jonson Station. She brought an impressive resume to her new role as station roboticist, including extensive interdisciplinary training and experience in computer science (especially artificial intelligence), both mechanical engineering and electronic engineering, and nanotechnology. Sarah spent little time in her private room near the other crew quarters, but focused instead on setting up her work spaces. She inherited the existing robotics lab, but also quickly began developing new android fabrication and maintenance facilities in formerly unused sections of the station.
Her position at Jonson Station proved to be unique and unprecedented. Rather than officially joining the existing crew hierarchy, she operated as an independent contractor – but her contract demanded ambitious services and accountability to the station. JE provided her a reasonable budget to establish work spaces, cover overhead costs, and support basic operational costs, but she hoped to obtain additional funding from other sources to enable more robust products and services.
At the outset, Sarah put most of her efforts into developing the android assembly workshop -- importing new fabrication equipment as well as repurposing older robotics tooling -- which would allow constructing complete androids/gynoids onboard Jonson Station. Although the simpler parts could be created in the station's own computer-driven machine shops, she had to import complex components for the positronic brains necessary for fully autonomous androids and gynoids. She also set up equipment for maintaining and repairing them, including charging stations and other frequently used devices.
But we've only covered her professional activities – in the next blog entry, we'll delve into aspects of her personal life which would strongly affect upcoming events at Jonson Station....