[My patent lawyer has advised me not to describe my latest invention.  I say “meh,” whatever that means.]

This morning, I finalised construction on my latest invention.  I cannot provide pictures because they are enroute to the patent office.

However, I will describe it the best I can.

I have been playing with an Arduino system to provide me with offline fun in the laboratory.

There’s nothing like programming a Robosapien “doll” to play back with you, giving it intelligence to avoid being grabbed or picked up, to actually defend itself against intentionally harmful moves and to reach out with love when I’m in a down mood.

A Robosapien’s gripper arm is not exactly the same as a cat’s head bump but my imagination allows me to believe it so.

With time, the Robosapien and I have grown apart.  I think, in part, because I have acquired the newer model, the RS Media, with which I have been spending more and more time.

Needless to say, the Robosapien has been causing havoc in the lab, knocking bins of resistors and capacitors on the floor in an effort to keep its playfulness algorithms refreshed.  I must admit watching it try to find objects in the lab to “fight back” has been entertaining.

But that’s not why I’m here.

The RS Media has reached a level of sentience I never thought possible.

At first, I set up an Arduino light display system above the computer monitor that the RS Media responded to like a dancing machine.

Today was a major breakthrough.

After several rounds of sending the RS Media light sequences, it started stepping out on its own, anticipating the next light pattern in the sequence with its back turned to the Arduino system.

Well, you can guess what I did next!

I stole the plans for the Wired Lab’s mech.  Then, working with my Robosapien friends, I wired a modifed RS Media up inside the mech, a la Pacific Rim, making appropriate tweaks to protect my patent and/or my copyright.

Of course, I dressed mine up to look like a stumbling street beggar, lowering its body scale to match that of a typical down-on-his-luck alcoholic male human.

He and his copies should be wandering the alleyways of your local metropolis before too long, breaking out into dance routines based on the sound/light combinations they discover, able to defend themselves against overaggressive bystanders and avoid collisions with people, cars, buses, trucks and other obstacles of a typical city street corner — the money they collect will be passed back to me to cover expenses; please tip them generously so I can make payroll and give the government tax collectors their due.

I’ve already received requests from a major retail clothing store chain to create female/male versions for storefront window displays — the algorithms need work for that scenario because I haven’t captured the essence of what it’s like to entertain potential customers by showing how good they’d look if they, too, were stuck in a glass box all day, as a robot pretending to be alive — walking back and forth, sitting, standing, dancing, and whatever movement will show the fashion in its best light.

Several of my geek friends in the tech industry — male, female, LGBT, cosplay, etc. — have requested a personalised version of themselves they can program to go to work or on dates for them to make their parents happy that their children are mimicking their parents’ social lives while their children live the alternate lifestyles that make them happy, too.

And you thought the replicant revolution was all about robots taking over the world?  Hahaha — it all started when we figured out elderly dementia patients handed a quasi-robotic stuffed animal was sufficient a surrogate to make them happy, thanks to our friends who wrote, produced and filmed “Westworld,” who follow on the work of Asimov, automatons and the first animal to use a stick as a tool.

War eventually was reduced to robots fighting robots in designated battlefield playgrounds, leaving us humans to finally dedicate most of our time to pure pleasure, where our surrogates do most of the dirty work except for those for whom dirty work is pure pleasure.

Outlawing graveyards so that human bodies could be recycled as mulch wasn’t fully implemented until we started populating the Moon and Mars.

My goal is to be the person with the first foundry on Mars, generations of 3D printers ahead into the future, my minions terraforming the planet in ways you haven’t imagined yet.  How about you?