Tag Archives: automatic

The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak

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Dr. Strange uses the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak to immobilize Kaecilius while they are fighting in the New York Sanctum.

The bands are a flexible torso shaped device, that look like a bunch of metal ribs attached to a spine. We do not actually know whether this relic has “chosen” Strange or if it simply functions for anyone who wields it correctly. But given its immense power, it definitely qualifies as a relic and opens up the conversation about whether some relics are simply masterless.

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On the name

Discussing the bands is made semantically difficult for two reasons. The first is that “they” are multiple bands joined together by a single “spine” and handled in combat like a single thing. So it needn’t be plural “Bands.” That’s like calling a shoe the Running Laces of Reebok. It is an it not a they. Also it is not Crimson (even in the comic books, most folks would call them pink.) They are not actually named in the film, but authoritative source material indicates that is what these are. So forgive the weirdness, but this post will discuss the bands as a single thing. An it.

So where did it get its plural name? Comic book fans have already noted: In the books, the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak are actually a spell for binding. They are—no surprise—glowing crimson bands of energy, and used by many spellcasters, not just Strange. Here they are in The Uncanny X-Men, cast by the Scarlet Witch and subsequently smashed by Magik.

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Since these are in fact, multiples, its plural there makes sense. Its reimagining as a single thing for the Marvel Cinematic Universe is what has us speaking of it in the singular.

Operation

The operation of the device seems to be very simple. Upon impact with a person, the bands quickly twist and clamp to immobilize the limbs, arms, head, and torso of the person. It also covers their mouth so no spells can be cast (or instructions given to minions).

How might this work as technology?

The Crimson Bands are  robotic device composed of a self-powered collection of electromagnetic metal hinges and locks, with bands that are interwoven with muscle wire to adjust to a person’s body.

En route to a collision with a humanoid body, the microcomputer scans the surface area of the person using LIDAR to create a surface mapping and body model. This allows the Bands to adjust itself midair to achieve the proper orientation. Then the primary mechanical controller snaps each band shut in sequence beginning with the torso and expanding to the extremities. As each section finds purchase, it tightens, adjusting and locking in place. The sequence takes only a few seconds and leaves the victim in a rigid kneeling position where they are immobilized to prevent any kind of action or spellcasting. The bands that cover the mouth can be removed independently to allow interrogation.

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What works well

  • It’s non-lethal, but still neutralizes a very powerful enemy.
  • It does not require a great deal of precision. Toss it roughly toward the enemy, and it will do its best to compensate for your imprecision. “Close enough” counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, earthquakes, and the Crimson Bands.
  • It probably works on a variety of humanoid body shapes and sizes.
  • The ability to remove the mouth band is useful for interrogation.

Improvements: Provide a keyhole

We never see an obvious release mechanism, but there is one, as Strange discovers when Kaecilius has been freed when Strange returns to the Sanctum. We can’t exactly critique what we don’t see, but we can discuss the affordance of the function. Should it be obvious? Probably but not too obvious, less a zealot run up and quickly figure out how to free their boss. But there should be some sort of “keyhole”  that will help Strange know that he needs some sort of “key” to release his prisoner and not leave him in a stress position indefinitely. So there should be the equivalent of a keyhole on the bands. And hopefully one the Cloak can explain, or Strange can figure out.

Improvements: Miniaturize

While highly effective, this artifact is not particularly useful unless you happen to be in a fight while standing next to it. It’s simply too large and bulky to carry around. So, if it could be miniaturized, it would prove more generally useful. Or maybe, since this occurs in a world with magical flight and teleportation, they could be summonable.

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Improvements: Authorization

It seems that the Cloak isn’t authorized to use this artifact. (Why else waste all that time trying to pull Strange to it?) Authorizing the Cloak would mean additional agentive controls for dealing with, you know, groups of zealots. We also don’t know if it has a “whitelist” of people it should not immobilize, but that would be useful to prevent it being turned against its owner.

Improvements: Nonhumanoid

The overall shape of the bands are humanoid, indicating that they would not likely function on anything other than a being with the standard humanoid legs, arms, head, mouth, and torso. This fortunately covers most of the characters in the Marvel Universe, but there are a handful of exceptions. If it had a more micro-component based design, it might be able to reconfigure itself to help with non-humanoid malefactors as well.

Then we’d have to come up with some other mechanism to account for scaling to Rhunian, Celestial, or Faltine-sized things.

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Nike MAGs

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BttF_026Dr. Brown gives Marty some 21st century clothes in order to blend in. The first of these items are shoes. Marty is surprised to see no laces. To activate them, he pushes his foot into the shoe. When his heel makes contact, the main strap constricts to hold his heel in place. Then the laces constrict to hold the ball of the heel down. Finally, the tongue of the shoe and the “Nike” logo glow.

Yep. Perfect. The activation is natural to the act of putting on the device. The glow acts as a status indicator and symbol. No wonder everyone wanted them.

The Mechanized Squire

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Having completed the welding he did not need to do, Tony flies home to a ledge atop Stark tower and lands. As he begins his strut to the interior, a complex, ring-shaped mechanism raises around him and follows along as he walks. From the ring, robotic arms extend to unharness each component of the suit from Tony in turn. After each arm precisely unscrews a component, it whisks it away for storage under the platform. It performs this task so smoothly and efficiently that Tony is able to maintain his walking stride throughout the 24-second walk up the ramp and maintain a conversation with JARVIS. His last steps on the ramp land on two plates that unharness his boots and lower them into the floor as Tony steps into his living room.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

This is exactly how a mechanized squire should work. It is fast, efficient, supports Tony in his task of getting unharnessed quickly and easily, and—perhaps most importantly—how we wants his transitions from superhero to playboy to feel: cool, effortless, and seamless. If there was a party happening inside, I would not be surprised to see a last robotic arm handing him a whiskey.

This is the Jetsons vision of coming home to one’s robotic castle writ beautifully.

There is a strategic question about removing the suit while still outside of the protection of the building itself. If a flying villain popped up over the edge of the building at about 75% of the unharnessing, Tony would be at a significant tactical disadvantage. But JARVIS is probably watching out for any threats to avoid this possibility.

Another improvement would be if it did not need a specific landing spot. If, say…

  • The suit could just open to let him step out like a human-shaped elevator (this happens in a later model of the suit seen in The Avengers 2)
  • The suit was composed of fully autonomous components and each could simply fly off of him to their storage (This kind of happens with Veronica later in The Avengers 2)
  • If it was composed of self-assembling nanoparticles that flowed off of him, or, perhaps, reassembled into a tuxedo (If I understand correctly, this is kind-of how the suit currently works in the comic books.)

These would allow him to enact this same transition anywhere.

Other floor cleaning robots

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Yesterday I offered extra credit if a reader could name the first floor sweeping robot in a film in the Make It So survery. Pixel I/O smartly noted that The Jetsons (debut 1962) had one—its autovac. (Thanks to Matt Houghton of TechVert.com for posting the image.)

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This is a great catch, but Pixel I/O rightly acknowledged that The Jetsons was not a film, so off by a technicality. Shouts out anyway, as this example was a full three or four years before the film I did have in mind, which was the only-nominally sci-fi comedy The Glass Bottom Boat (1966). Still, I happened to come across it in research and captured it.

In the film, the inventor Rod (Bruce Templeton) tries to impress Jennifer (Doris Day) with this floor-cleaning robot. It only manages to pop out of its door to arc towards a dropped banana peel and through reversed footage, arc right back into its home under the kitchen island.

What’s interesting about these two examples are their similarity. They’re each the size of a small dog. Each has an antenna and two eyes. The antennae speak of the radio-controlled paradigm of the era. Audiences needed to know how they are being controlled, and this shortcut answered the question at a glance. The eyes hint at a need for anthropomorphism, or possibly zoomorphism, for users to understand the thing’s capabilities. We know it can see us and the things around it because of this simple visual affordance.

Floor sweeping robots

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To illustrate his capitalist ideology, (a high-tech version of the parable of the broken window) Zorg activates his automatic cleaning robots. To do this, he deliberately crashes a glass to the floor, where a set of robots come scuttling out from beneath his desk and begin cleaning up.

Three of them serve to demarcate the space as a “”robots working”” zone, with tall masts from which red beacon lights warn anyone nearby. In the middle of these three, a sweeper robot gathers the large pieces of glass with broom and dustbin actuators.

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Then, a vacuum robot spins above the location to remove the fine pieces of glass.

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Finally, a hemispheric robot also comes to sterilize the area, or possibly to just spray a pleasing scent in the air. After they are done, they retreat automatically to the desk, and a new drinking glass rises from a hidden compartment to Zorg’s desktop, filling with water to the accompaniment of a small voice that announces ““water”” and, as a bowl of the stuff also raises, ““fruit.””

As Zorg pulls a cherry from the bowl, the same voice announces somewhat pointlessly, ““a cherry.”” (Perhaps useful if the eater is unfamiliar with basic types of fruit.)

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Analysis

The robots are meant to do their job safely and efficiently, and then put themselves away as quickly as possible. The main “interface” task they have is to keep nearby humans informed and safe. (Did Asimov write a law for vacuum cleaners?) A minor secondary goal might be to distinguish the function of each by their shape. The robots inform observers explicitly with the stanchion robots’ beacon lights and bright red patterns. In addition, the whirring sounds of each robot’s motors and actuators help to reinforce the fact that they are working. If they were completely silent they would be more problematic for people not looking or unable to see. The beacon might be a bit of overkill and distracting to someone at a distance, but since the robots are small enough to be a trip hazard, and Cornelius is in fact less than a meter away at the time of sweeping, I can see why it might be needed in this particular case. That they are each readily distinguishable means it might be easier to intervene or select a particular one for maintenance. So, aside from the faulty logic they’re meant to embody, mostly really well designed.

The main improvement I can imagine is that the system might reduce the trip hazard by unifying these disparate functions in a single device, and then either keeping them stanchion-high or flattening its top out like a step. But then we’d just have invented Roomba five years early.

Extra credit

This isn’t the first floor cleaning robot seen on the silver screen. There was another movie over three decades before that included one, even though it wasn’t what most people would consider sci-fi. Can any of the Make It So readers identify that film in the comments? (I’ll post pics of the answer once someone guesses it.)

Slideaway bed

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When Korben stands up, his bed recognizes the change. In response it pulls the messy bed and linens away, where they will be “autowashed,” i.e. automatically sanitized, remade, and sealed in plastic (for bedbug protection?) A fresh bed rises up to replace the messy one as the bedframe slides into the wall.

This automated response might be frustrating if it presumed too much. Say, if Korben got up in the night to use the restroom and came back to find his bed missing, so you’d want it to be as context-aware as possible. And there’s evidence that it’s not too smart a system. Later in the film Cornelius hides in the bed and is nearly suffocated as it tries to autowash the bed with him in it, and wraps him in plastic. I get the comedy in the scene, but really, if it had the sensors to know when Korben was laying down in it, it should have a safety that prevents that very thing when a person is there.

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Korben does have manual controls. There are two panels of pushbuttons at waist height, about a meter apart on a sliver of wall above the bed recess. We don’t get great views of these panels, but we do see Korben using one of the buttons to hide General Munro and his cronies in the hideaway refrigerator. In the glimpses we get we can see that there are six buttons on each panel, each button labeled with a high-contrast icon. The leftmost button on each controls the bed. Pressing it when it’s hidden opens it. Pressing it when it’s open closes it and, as we saw before, starts the murderous autowash.

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All told it’s a pretty awesome system. The agentive part of getting up is handled seamlessly. The alarm has gone off, Korben’s up, and having the bed disappear saves space in the room and removes the temptation of Korben’s slinking back to bed and making himself late for work. And to summon the bed or hide it manually at some unusual time, Korben has understandable, accessible controls. The main down side is the lack of a safety or panic button, and the comparatively minor annoyance that Korben has to tear that plastic off every night even if he just wanted to pass out after a long day of saving the world.