| rdfs:comment
| - Whenever the camera assumes the POV of a robot, we see how the robot sees the world, which is always as a kind of computer readout. It's usually slightly pixellated, often tinted, and frequently has a grid laid over everything. They can zoom in and out, and are capable of picture-in-picture (e.g., when they see a person they might bring up a file photo of them). Most importantly, words, numbers, enemy strengths and weaknesses and various other data will flash across the screen, identifying people and items, reminding the robot of its objectives, contemplating possible courses of action, or sometimes just flashing little scrawls of code that mean nothing to the viewer.
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| abstract
| - Whenever the camera assumes the POV of a robot, we see how the robot sees the world, which is always as a kind of computer readout. It's usually slightly pixellated, often tinted, and frequently has a grid laid over everything. They can zoom in and out, and are capable of picture-in-picture (e.g., when they see a person they might bring up a file photo of them). Most importantly, words, numbers, enemy strengths and weaknesses and various other data will flash across the screen, identifying people and items, reminding the robot of its objectives, contemplating possible courses of action, or sometimes just flashing little scrawls of code that mean nothing to the viewer. The readout almost always contains jokes. In comedy they will be blatant jokes such as the robot identifying a person as a fat ugly slob or something, while in serious efforts the jokes are usually hidden little shout outs. In reality, of course, it would be absolutely pointless for all this information to come up on the screen. The only one who it could be written there for is the robot itself, but the information comes from the robot's own memory banks. Are we to understand that when the robot wants the lowdown on what it's looking at it sends the data to its screen, converts it to a readout, and reads it off of there? Why can't it just remember stuff directly like a normal person? (Aside: the question of how much of our internal life is "visualised", how much is "abstracted", and the affect this has on human nature is the subject of a great many philosophical thought experiments involving robots. This trope is arguably a Translation Convention to show the robot's state of mind, much like subtitles.) Probably started with Westworld (Yul Brynner's Gunslinger robot) and The Terminator. Often the graphics used will seem exceptionally low-quality for a futuristic robot. The Terminator actually pulled up 6502 assembly source code from an Apple II magazine. (See also Our Graphics Will Suck in the Future.) This trope is sometimes used for living, organic characters as a visual gag. It suggests that whatever activity they are performing, they are doing so in a robotic, slavish manner. Example: Homer Simpson judging potential men for Selma in an early episode of The Simpsons. In Cyberpunk settings, a human character with implanted cyber-eyes may have a vision field like this, complete with sensor read-outs, crosslines superimposed over enemies he's aiming at, or picture-in-picture for an incoming videophone message. Justified in that a human cyborg (plausibly) can't directly download digital data into his brain. Alternatively, a character connected to a robot drone via a cyber datalink will be able to see through the sensors of the drone. It often accompanies a character using Robo Speak. Examples of Robo Cam include:
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)