Daybreak Electronics
In the early 1980s, there was a brief bubble in consumer robotics as a dozen companies, including Veradyne Applied Robotics, Opaque Scientific, Yutani Onsen, and Flatirons Computer, raced to adapt bipedal military systems to civilian applications. The most popular domains were housekeeping, babysitting, warehouse management, construction, and retail. The bubble did not last long; with the 1985 introduction of the Nanite Systems Aide, the first artificial combat medic, speculators assumed that it was only a matter of time before the military-industrial complex turned its attention toward the lucrative consumer electronics market and drove the competition out of business with economies of scale and superior AI. Although NS did eventually found the Consumer Products Division and enter the civilian market, their flagship in-house offering, the SXD, proved to be far from affordable (or suitable) for the average household, and so there continued to be very little overlap between the worlds of civilian and military robotics.
There is one curious exception to this pattern, which is the NS-304 Daybreak system. The Daybreak Electronics Company was a Flint-based startup founded in 1983 by Jordan M. Vanough which intended to pursue development of integrated automated housekeeping systems, a precursor to the modern concept of a 'smart home.' Vanough's vision included robotic vacuum cleaning and dusting, voice-controlled lighting and HVAC, powered doors, and more. Investors from the US Banking Consortium—the same financial body responsible for the reconstitution of the ADRG into Nanite Systems—were intrigued with the premise, and provided substantial seed money to Vanough's company.
Due to the ambitiousness of his project he had run out of money by 1986, just before his first product, the keystone 'robotic maid' responsible for vacuuming, dusting, etc., was ready for release. With the market for consumer robotics cooling, the USBC refused to provide a second cash infusion, instead suggesting that Vanough meet with NS. Assessing Daybreak's objectives as high-risk, NS offered Daybreak a loan on the condition that if it could not be repaid within 12 months, then Daybreak's assets and IP would become NS property.
To assist Vanough in meeting these ambitious goals, engineers from the fledgling Consumer Products Division were allocated to working out difficulties with various hardware systems, including power control. Their design influence can be seen in the final product, which saw a distinct back-mounted main controller unit with a single central cooler, similar to the SXD, although the rest of the robot was drastically different. The Daybreak Maid had a simple, stylized outer shell of slightly translucent shiny black plastic, with a featureless head that concealed infrared sensors, speakers, and microphone. It was limited to 14 joints in total (wrists, elbows, shoulders, ankles, knees, hips, waist, neck) and used a socket system to hold its active tool. For it to be fully effective, the household had to be 'annotated' for its safe exploration using strips of IR-reflective tape. Audio was limited to a small range of verbal commands, and the Maid would frequently collide with people, pets, and furniture.
Despite the limitations of the hardware, Daybreak's fortunes seemed to be looking up; the Daybreak Maid System launched a month before the deadline, and was well-received, although sales figures were weaker than hoped due to the depressed market. Sadly, Vanough suffered serious head trauma in a bicycling accident less than a week later, leaving him with persistent memory problems from which he would never recover. Lacking his vital leadership skills, Daybreak Electronics was essentially decapitated. The Vice President, Charlotte Foster, negotiated with Nanite Systems to pursue an acquisition under the terms of their loan default, and the Daybreak Electronics Company was absorbed into the Consumer Products Division on August 21, 1987.
Although the Daybreak Living Home never materialized, former D.E.C. employees contributed to a wide range of CPD projects, including SXD kinematics, charging interfaces, and optimization algorithms for scheduling cargo deliveries to remote colonies. The Daybreak Maid lives on through the NS-304 main controller, a slightly modified version of the original Daybreak CPU module that can run Companion and is compatible with the final version of the SXD controller mounting standard, similar to the changes necessary for the NS-112 Aide controller as it transitioned to a civilian product.
There is one curious exception to this pattern, which is the NS-304 Daybreak system. The Daybreak Electronics Company was a Flint-based startup founded in 1983 by Jordan M. Vanough which intended to pursue development of integrated automated housekeeping systems, a precursor to the modern concept of a 'smart home.' Vanough's vision included robotic vacuum cleaning and dusting, voice-controlled lighting and HVAC, powered doors, and more. Investors from the US Banking Consortium—the same financial body responsible for the reconstitution of the ADRG into Nanite Systems—were intrigued with the premise, and provided substantial seed money to Vanough's company.
Due to the ambitiousness of his project he had run out of money by 1986, just before his first product, the keystone 'robotic maid' responsible for vacuuming, dusting, etc., was ready for release. With the market for consumer robotics cooling, the USBC refused to provide a second cash infusion, instead suggesting that Vanough meet with NS. Assessing Daybreak's objectives as high-risk, NS offered Daybreak a loan on the condition that if it could not be repaid within 12 months, then Daybreak's assets and IP would become NS property.
To assist Vanough in meeting these ambitious goals, engineers from the fledgling Consumer Products Division were allocated to working out difficulties with various hardware systems, including power control. Their design influence can be seen in the final product, which saw a distinct back-mounted main controller unit with a single central cooler, similar to the SXD, although the rest of the robot was drastically different. The Daybreak Maid had a simple, stylized outer shell of slightly translucent shiny black plastic, with a featureless head that concealed infrared sensors, speakers, and microphone. It was limited to 14 joints in total (wrists, elbows, shoulders, ankles, knees, hips, waist, neck) and used a socket system to hold its active tool. For it to be fully effective, the household had to be 'annotated' for its safe exploration using strips of IR-reflective tape. Audio was limited to a small range of verbal commands, and the Maid would frequently collide with people, pets, and furniture.
Despite the limitations of the hardware, Daybreak's fortunes seemed to be looking up; the Daybreak Maid System launched a month before the deadline, and was well-received, although sales figures were weaker than hoped due to the depressed market. Sadly, Vanough suffered serious head trauma in a bicycling accident less than a week later, leaving him with persistent memory problems from which he would never recover. Lacking his vital leadership skills, Daybreak Electronics was essentially decapitated. The Vice President, Charlotte Foster, negotiated with Nanite Systems to pursue an acquisition under the terms of their loan default, and the Daybreak Electronics Company was absorbed into the Consumer Products Division on August 21, 1987.
Although the Daybreak Living Home never materialized, former D.E.C. employees contributed to a wide range of CPD projects, including SXD kinematics, charging interfaces, and optimization algorithms for scheduling cargo deliveries to remote colonies. The Daybreak Maid lives on through the NS-304 main controller, a slightly modified version of the original Daybreak CPU module that can run Companion and is compatible with the final version of the SXD controller mounting standard, similar to the changes necessary for the NS-112 Aide controller as it transitioned to a civilian product.