Chapter 227: Core Robot

Carrying home the little tiger named Kitty, which was clearly male but given a feminine name, Henry did not bring the cage originally meant for the tiger. The reason was simple: the car couldn't fit it.

That thing was built to adult tiger standards; the iron bars were thick and heavy, but the main issue was its massive size. Unless using a truck, Henry's small Cadillac simply had no chance.

Placing the listless little tiger on the passenger seat and securing it slightly with the seatbelt, Henry made a rough judgment based on veterinary books he had read: besides hunger, this cub was likely suffering from dehydration.

It was evident that after capturing this tiger cub, the poachers had not only failed to feed it well but hadn't even given it much water.

Henry did not stop midway but drove straight back to his rental. Just before going upstairs, his figure holding the little tiger was spotted by old Gary, who was sunbathing.

"Henry!" old Gary called out.

"Yes, Gary. What is it?"

"What are you holding?"

"Ah, this is a tabby cat named Kitty. Kitty, come on, say hello, this is Gary." Henry grabbed the tiger's paw and pretended to wave.

He then added, "I know we said no pets initially, but this little cat is homeless and pitiful. Can you make an exception?"

Henry said this because old Gary's principles were not actually that rigid; he was quite tolerant of apartment tenants.

Of course, this was also related to Henry paying rent promptly without delay, and the good relationship built by occasionally bringing food.

Standing far away and unable to see clearly, old Gary waved his hand and said, "Alright. But you must clean up the feces yourself; you cannot let it relieve itself in the hallway or elsewhere.

"If someone reports it to me, there will be no exceptions. If it howls in heat at night, I'll have to let it go out to the street to find other male cats. Understand?"

Old Gary mistook the little creature in Henry's hands for a female cat. Henry certainly did not intend to explain, but agreed, "No problem. It won't cause trouble for others."

"Mm, that's right, don't cause trouble for others." Old Gary waved him away. The autumn in California always made him feel drowsy.

"I'm going up," Henry said, then went straight upstairs.

Upon entering, a snowman-like round robot rolled to his feet. Infrared scanning performed biometric identification and suddenly emitted a high-frequency alarm sound inaudible to most people.

'Unknown object intruder detected.'

This was a certain type of encrypted high-frequency sound; warning-type prompts were always transmitted this way. This was to prevent illegal intruders from noticing that this toy-like round robot had already issued an alert.

Compared to loud, noisy alarms meant to scare people away, Henry, this Kryptonian, preferred to operate secretly.

The core robot, codenamed BB, had a plastic shell with no fancy patterns or paint. Overall, it looked like a tumbler toy for children.

However, the lower half of this spherical toy could roll, allowing the robot to run all over the floor.

The reason for not using metal was, of course, that plastic is light. With low self-weight, it didn't require a high-power motor, and battery endurance could be extended.

Although Henry had unlocked the technology tree for lithium-iron batteries, this thing was ultimately not a small Arc Reactor and still needed charging. Charging meant considering electricity costs.

To avoid his electricity bill exceeding that of a normal family too much and becoming too conspicuous, Henry was quite restrained in his behavior. Otherwise, instantly draining the power of the entire area would not be difficult for him.

On the other hand, the appearance of this plastic toy could lower the guard of illegal intruders. Although old Gary guarded the first floor, no thefts had been heard of in any unit of this apartment building so far.

The robot's control program was not artificial intelligence. Such a growth-capable self-learning program required a certain level of computing power support; current computer equipment was not powerful enough. Henry had simply written a set of response methods for most situations.

So, after hearing the warning sound emitted by the core robot BB, Henry immediately issued commands using the same high-frequency sound.

'BB, register new secondary user, username Kitty.'

'New secondary user registered, Kitty. Please provide a DNA sample as soon as possible.' "Welcome, Kitty."

BB's voice was a very stiff electronic synthesized sound. It wasn't that he didn't want to use a gentle big sister voice; doing so would require extra computing resources to combine sentences and express tone and attitude.

Moreover, the electronic voice strangely appealed to people of Henry's generation.

As for high-frequency voice communication, it came with high-level permissions. Even if outsiders detected it, they would still need to crack the encryption method. After cracking it, they would need to identify a non-Western language system to understand the content, and then use the same method to obtain high-level permissions.

With these layers of security measures, Henry didn't want to set up additional user IDs and passwords. What about requiring regular changes? That anti-human design would only block forgetful users themselves, not determined ones.

It could be said that during this period, Henry's most focused work was building this voice-controlled system. Just figuring out how to make the microphone distinguish environmental human voices from sounds coming from the television took considerable effort.

Then, after receiving voice commands, how to convert them into instructions the machine could understand. How the method of voice commands evolved from precise judgment to the current fuzzy judgment.

Even when he used a changed pitch or abnormal speaking style, it could still trigger command actions. Only after making thorough adjustments to the details did he achieve today's results.

Actually, at this level, although the system was not built primarily on artificial intelligence programs, it utilized big data analysis methods to achieve these functions.

High-frequency voice communication was the highest-level user with built-in permissions, capable of changing underlying confidential data.

Henry himself was a level-one user, possessing permissions to use all command functions.

Level-two users only possessed partial command functions, awaiting activation. At this level, there was currently only the little tiger, Kitty. Considering the possibility that he might not be home in the future and that Kitty's three meals would need to be prepared by BB, some functions were opened up discretionarily.

The only registered guest was old Gary; after he entered, BB would not issue a warning. No lethal defensive measures were installed in the house; only surveillance cameras would automatically activate upon illegal intruders entering.

In a rented house, especially an apartment where ordinary people live, setting up lethal traps would be excessive. Besides, the tighter the protection, the more it seemed to tell others that the things here were important. Henry had not placed any irreplaceable treasures in the rental.

For instance, at his black clinic in South Los Angeles, when it first opened, thieves visited every other day. Now, it was in a state where even cockroaches and rats would disdain it. That was simply because it was open to anyone coming and going, and there was nothing sellable there.

After registering the new user and greeting the entering user, BB rolled back to its charging station. This core robot could currently only be equipped with external arms to perform cleaning. Henry had not designed too many functions yet.

So, pouring a large bowl of water for the little tiger was something Henry had to do himself. Then he took three large steaks out of the refrigerator to fry, preparing for Kitty to enjoy one of them.

Whether to feed it raw or cooked, Henry had not yet figured it out. He might as well let it eat the same cooked food as himself.

The only thing to consider was that tigers are carnivores. One couldn't treat them like dogs, where whatever humans eat, they eat too. Because tigers do not have sufficient ability to digest starch, eating too many plants or grains would only cause indigestion.

Now he truly had to work hard to earn money; otherwise, he couldn't support this little ancestor.

(End of this chapter)