Citizens Of Antiford The Attridge Dwarf Decision Engine or "A.D.D. Engine" is the brain inside of each Buford Automaton.
History
Lucas M. Buford, the last in a line of engineers who passed on secret journals by Doctor Andrea Moreau, along with his mentor Lars Attridge perfected a technology which connected decision-making to the classic automaton technology of the past to complete what we think of as the modern automaton.
The technology is still highly proprietary, although rivals and fellows in the field are creating near-facsimiles of the simpler "instincts" after studying machines which use the A.D.D. Engine.
Utility
There are a number of ability / intelligence levels, known as instincts. Each instinct inherits the technology and abilities of the lower instincts.
First Instinct
This is the least expensive for customers to purchase or commision, because very limited testing is required.
These are only capable of singular tasks. These tasks are pre-programmed, and cannot be changed. They can listen to simple language and interpret visuals of the world around them. This ability varies between automatons.
Maintenance: Fuel
These automatons may be run indefinitely (if not for rust, wear and tear) as long as the boiler is refueled with water and coal.
Second Instinct
These are more expensive, versatile automatons.
The introduction of a script-scroll box is what defines this instinct. Customers can commission new skills to be created, which a script engineer will be assigned to create for the customer.
Maintenance: Rebalance
When there is no power, the ADDE’s chemical sections return to initial states of equilibrium, allowing for decisions to be made correctly. An automaton that has not been allowed a minimum of eight hours a week inactive runs the risk of finding all skip true.
Third Instinct
These are currently the most expensive to create and are not commercially available.
These automatons have a higher level of decision making in their internal programming. They are designed to run internal programming by default unless it is decided upon to run the script.
They keep a Result Memory Mapping Queue (RMQ) of environment-activity-outcome.
At the end of every activity, a record is kept about whether that activity in that environment resulted in a positive or negative outcome. This result will either increase the counter on an existing mapping or be added to the end while removing the first in the queue.
Maintenance: Sleep Mode
When the threshold of stored power is below a certain level, visual, aural, communicative, and motion systems are all completely ignored by the ADDE, and the remaining energy is used for sorting the RMQ. The least recalled/repeated mappings are placed as first to be destroyed for a new mappings.
Without running sleep mode, the automaton will destroy result mappings that should be kept and maintained, and will only be able to make decisions based on recent results.