Megan's Time with the Robotic Arm Ch. 01

This is more of a prologue to future stories. I hope there is interest in where this is going.

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At the GP&E lab there are lots of crazy projects. The company has been scooping up the latest tech companies with the ideology that eventually they will get enough technologies together that they will synergize. As such you find one group working on AI, another on Game Theory, one guy with a monkey focusing on thought control, and a whole host of eccentric projects happening in various wings of the building. Megan was not involved in any of the fun ones. While her expertise was in Algorithm Optimization she found it more exciting as a hobby rather than as a career (Sadly she discovered this AFTER Grad school). At GP&E she was working on a contract for safety gear. Seatbelt manufacturers for some reason think its an area they can improve in so they contracted GP&E to "build a better seatbelt." Megan spent her days in the East Wing analyzing seatbelt webbing and replacing cartridges in the restrictors. It was VERY good pay and she didn't mind the work.

Over in the South Wing in Lab 37 was an experiment in robotic control. David was leading a team in designing a robot to pull humans to safety in the event of a misstep or fall. Typically robots are put in place to take dangerous and monotonous tasks from humans but there are still a few job that humans are just better at. The problem with that is that those job are still crazy unsafe so David's team was tasked with designing a robot to keep humans safe while doing jobs the robots couldn't.

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"Megan?", David stood in the doorway of Lab 42 (generous calling it a Lab as it was about the size of a broom closet).

"MEGAN!?", David said now realizing that the air compressor noise was drowning out his voice.

"Oh..hey!"

Megan walked over and shut off the compressor and paused the logging software on her computer. She knew David from the cafeteria and the company holiday party but being on opposite wings they didn't often see each other.

"You got a sec? I'm having some trouble with an algorithm on a project. I would normally ask the team in the North Wing but they are all on tight deadlines."

Megan put down her things and and joined David to walk over to the South Wing. On the walk over David explained the basics of the project he was working on and while the topic wasn't boring her she found herself zoning out a little bit and noticing how blue David's eyes were. He was 6' with light brown hair. He wasn't super fit but certainly in better shape than most of the lab techs. He was sporting a 5 o'clock shadow which told Megan that he's clearly been spending some late nights in the Lab.

"Welcome to Lab 37", David proclaimed as he pushed open the doors and held his arms out as if showing off the lab.

Lab 37 was much bigger than Megan's lab. A Studio apartment was bigger than Megan's lab but this was HUGE. Multiple lockers, a few offices, cubicles, and even a conference room. David gave her a quick tour as he walked down the zigzag pattern of the hallway until he got to the end, "Testing Room" it read. Inside the Testing Room was a bank of server racks filled to the brim with loud fans and blinking lights. Extending from the racks was a big harness of cables that led to a hodge-podge control center with a couple computers. From the control center was bundle of cables that led to a pile of metal parts in the center of the room. It wasn't clear to Megan what this all was but she would soon find out.

"So the plan for this robot is to stop humans from getting injured right? Well we figured the first and easiest thing to build would be an arm that simply reaches out and stops you. That part was easy, we have motion sensors and when you get too close to danger.." David steps past the control center over a yellow line and up to a red line painted on the floor. The robot arm awakens from the pile of parts on the floor. It looks like a gargantuan version of those robotic arms that kids use in science class. An axis on the floor to let it lay low, an "elbow" joint about five feet up, a "wrist" five feet past that and a clamping jaw about the width of a human body. The elbow of the robot is five feet in the air and the forearm of the machine is angled 90 degrees with the jaw widened to make as large of a blocker as possible. The arm blocks David like a crossing guard. "..it stops you." He continues.

"Wow, that was pretty quick." Megan says. "So it looks like you have that part figured out. What do you need help with?"

"Well it turns out that blocking a human is WAY easier than physically stopping a human."

David grabs a foam pool noodle from the pile on the desk. Megan would have found these odd but labs use tons of weird things for testing. A pool noodle was hardly the weirdest. David steps back up to the yellow line. The robot already awakened aims its arm at David prepping for a line cross. He extends the poodle noodle past the red line. The arm moves forward missing the noodle and begins to very slowly clamp down. When it gets the the approximate width of the pool noodle it slowly moves back over the red line and past the yellow line returning the noodle to a safe area and setting it on the floor.

David sighs, "Once it gets to actually touching the 'human' we have so many safeties built in that the reaction time can be measured with a calendar. Plus it sometimes doesn't even grab the 'human' because the sensors are providing data so slowly that the machine actually thinks it has succeeded in grabbing the subject. We've run thousands of tests and everyone agrees its an optimization error. Yea some of the code is buggy but nothing is so bad to slow it down this much."

Megan nodded noticing that the stop test worked at a perfectly reasonable speed. David led her over to one of the terminals and began showing her the source code. As Megan began scrolling David stepped back and watched. At first he was admiring her intensity in the code but then his eyes focused on Megan's athletic body. He saw her heading to the office gym often and it showed. She was very fit and short (5'2") but still some nice curves. Size C breasts, a cute little nose and bright ginger hair just past her shoulders.

"Wow.", Megan said.

David refocused on the computer screen as Megan turned to face him.

"David, there must be a hundred sub-routines just for safety measures. That's not even counting the sensor data workflows."

"I know. That's the problem. We HAVE to have every single one of those safety measures but it takes so much time to detect a human that it bogs down the rest. Do you think you could take a a look at it. Me and the other guys have all taken a stab at it but we don't have your expertise."

Megan agrees and David adds her account to the repository of source code. Megan tells him that she will take a look after hours and get back to him in a few days. Megan spends the next couple weeknights and the entire weekend going over each and every subroutine. Monday morning Megan shoots David an email with no body and the subject: Run Config87. Ten minutes go by and David pounds on Megan's lab door.

Once again she silences the compressor, "How did it go?"

"AMAZING!" David exclaims. "How did you do it? I mean there is still SO MUCH more tweaking but the sensor data is 100% accurate and it grabbed the noodle successfully for the first time."

Megan blushes. "Most of your routines were pulling the same data over and over. I ganged all the calls in to one and the rest was just reformatting all your code to fit. I actually didn't change any of the work you did on the coding of safety protocols."

David runs up and gives Megan a big hug. He thanks her and promises to bring her in for the next big test. Over the course of the next couple weeks David and Megan run in to each other and David is incredibly grateful. He says the lab is running more and more incremental tests and making tweaks but her code has put them back on schedule. About three weeks later Megan gets an email from David as ominous as the one she sent him: Plan to stay late on Friday. Friday comes and around 3pm David comes to her lab.

"You ready for the big test?! The guys are all grateful for your work so after we finish gathering the data we are taking you out for dinner and drinks. Lets go!"

Megan begins to blush and before she can say anything David grabs her arms and begins pulling her to the door and down the hall. She follows with a smile on her face. They make it to to the testing lab and she is greeted by the six other members of David's team. They all thank her for her work and begin to gather around the control center. David walks up to the control center computer and types in: run Config114 /threshold=1. He steps back from the control center and steps up to the yellow line.

"We've iterated on your algorithm and today is the first real life human test. We designed it with a 1-100 scaled for how aggressive it is so hopefully this doesn't snap me in half" he chuckled, "We'd like you to do the honors of hitting Go."

Megan's cheeks were now as red as her hair. She approached the control center and pressed the [Enter] key. David took one step past the red line. The arms began to move towards him. It widened to fit his waist, moved forward to envelope is torso, clamped to a gentle pressure and begin to lift him off the ground. As he lost his balance the machine compensated with corrective movements and began to gently set him down on the ground face first just past the yellow line. Once his body reached the floor the arm let go and returned to its home position. All the guys in the lab including David started screaming. David rose to his feet and they all clasped hands and started dancing in a circle. Megan joined them but with a puzzled look on her face wondered why it was moving so slow. Seeing the look on her face David stopped to explain.

"I know what you're thinking. Not very safe right? It's a logarithmic scale. 1 is a snails pace but we expect the machine's 'full' capacity to be somewhere around 50. The motors have to be super strong and quick for the data analysis but the actual moving of a human uses hardly any of their speed."

"Oh, that makes total sense." Megan said

"Lets go for 2!" David yelled.

He typed in: run Config114 /threshold=2. Stepped up to the yellow line and nodded at his colleagues. Marvin reached forward and hit enter. Again David stepped up but this time the machine moved a little quicker. When it picked up David it elicited a "Whoa" from him. The arm set him down as before and once again the whole team screamed only this time Megan was in on it.

As David rose Jake shoved him out of the way and shouting, "Let me try! Set it to 3"

As every member of the team jumped at their chance to try it very quickly became a contest. The 7 members of the team began taking turns upping the threshold every time. By the time Henry was on his 3rd go they were up to a threshold of 35. At this level the machine moved very swiftly to pick up Henry by the waist and put him down hard enough he had to make sure he turned his head so he didn't crack his glasses on the concrete floor.

David suddenly shouts at the guys, "Whoa...I am SO sorry. We got so caught up in testing. Megan, you have to give this a shot."

Since David yanked her out of her lab so fast she didn't really have time to set down her things. She removes her lab coat revealing a tight black long-sleeve shirt tucked in to a a low rise pair of jeans. Not wanting to scuff her shoes she removes her short heels.

Megan approaches the console, "I'll give it a shot but I don't think I'm going to go as crazy as you guys. Maybe I'll just set it to 10."

Megan types in the command, hits [Enter], and approaches the yellow line. She smiles and steps past the red line. The second her foot crosses the line the machine springs in to action only this time it all happened in a fraction of a second. The arm darts at her at breakneck speed as the jaws open. She is squeezed so tight her shirt becomes untucked and before she can open her mouth to say anything the arms lifts her up and slams her straight down on the concrete so forceful the dust on the floor puffs up besides her. David slams the [Emergency Stop] button and races to Megan's aid. The arm falls limp beside them as the bright red emergency lights shine from each joint.

"MEGAN!" David shouts.

She gasps for breath as the machine has knocked the wind out of her. David helps her sit up right to catch her breath. Megan begins panting heavily while clutching her face.

"That thing almost broke my nose! What the hell David?!"

David apologizes profusely but the look of panic still hasn't faded from his face.

Tim begins looking at the sensor data on the logging computer, "I don't understand. According to this the machine thinks it reacted appropriately." Tim slowly glances at the main console and clutches his temples, "Megan...You didn't set it to 10...you set it 100."

Dread fills everyone's face as they realize a simple typo almost killed their coworker. Megan regains her composure and is able to standup. She glances at the screen and comments on how stupid she was to mistype that. They all console her.

"Ok guys, lets shut this down for the night. Steve, your task is to design a test run program that confirms the variables before executing. Until then no more test runs. I think the time for celebratory drinks is over. Megan, let me walk you back to your lab to get your things."

"Thanks David but I'm good. Nothing's broken, just some bruises and I kind of want to just go back to my lab and sit. I promise I'm fine."

Megan walks back to her lab disheveled from the experience clutching her lab coat and clip board in front of her. She gets to her lab and closes the door. Dropping her things she turns to press her back against the door and shoves her hand down the front of her pants. Her panties are soaked. Her face gets flush as she presses her fingers inside herself and with her other hand begins to rub her chest. She continues rubbing until a wave of pleasure rushes over her. She drops to her knees panting and smiles.

"Yea...'accidentally' set it to 100".

To be continued...