Name: Heigstromm Eight-Three (Security Issue) [strict designation A4247Γ, referred to as Thomas]
Type: Android (inhuman body plan)
Gender: -N/A-
Age: 20
Appearance/Description: An erratic, tall drone with the cast of a collapsing scarecrow, this Heigstromm unit boasts an unreliable control feed and suspicious, skeletal nature, concerns mitigated by its tendency to communicate back to human masters in friendly notes. The Heigstromm carries on two parallel racks of armatures all manner of articulated digits, used to carefully manipulate sensor equipment, perform extremely delicate field sampling, and occasionally force an intruder's eyes into the back of their skull. Its fragile, ectomorphic build leaves little to be desired for stability and endurance, but its speed and precision render it able to keep pace with trained humans. Has recently been showing disturbing signs of memory accumulation, due to infrequent maintenance and an occasional inability to be located.
The Heigstromm, specially designed to operate in situations that require sorting and confinement of confusing levels of external stimuli, features a cortical structure derived somewhat from that of a small insect (namely a hybrid between the Terran dragonfly and ant).
A vast array of parallel-processing circuits allow fractional processing and layering of environmental detail; the longer the Heigstromm spends analyzing a particular area, the more "filters" of color, shade, chemical composition, motion tracking, and tactile sensation drop in.
Where the human thought process primarily relies on convoluted maps of mental imagery to conduct abstract thoughts, the Heigstromm draws on memory banks and reconstructs crude mimic scenarios directly in its perception, similar to the process of hallucination in human subjects.
This approach grounds it concretely in reality, as a safeguard against the development of moral, aesthetic, philosophical, and religious concepts, all highly dangerous to the fractured and decentralized "brain" of an operating drone. It is clear that with Thomas, this design intention has failed.
Background: former operations robot aboard a comet-chaser.