Miner Transport Emergency Assistant

A Miner Transport Emergency Assistant was a type of robot that was used by the Tellarites during the pre-Federation era.

During that time period, orphans were sent on deep space assignments on Tellar sleeper ships. The Miner Transport Emergency Assistants were active on board while the crew was in cryo-stasis so as to monitor possible emergencies that would require awakening a crew member.

One Miner Transport Emergency Assistant was called Boxy, which was aboard the starship that Jankom Pog was on, that was on a mission heading into the Delta Quadrant. Boxy awakened Jankom Pog to perform a variety of engineering maintenance, and ultimately allowed him to leave the ship since there wasn't enough oxygen on board to sustain all thirty members of the crew.

Technical details

In the case of Boxy, Miner Transport Emergency Assistants had the ability of flight, and were often seen hovering around. Their personality subroutines seemed to be rudimentary at best. And they didn't seem to be capable of identifying individual crewmembers without having them speak their full name. And even after speaking their full name, they were expected to do so over and over again. This also made it impossible for them to distinguish a trainee from an engineer.

Also, despite being referred to as an assistant, they did very little to assist in the efforts of repairing damaged systems. They generally just informed an awakened crewmember of the emergency, and not taking into account that it might be a task beyond a certain person's abilities. They also didn't awaken more than one person at a time to perform tasks quicker and more efficiently. (PRO: "Preludes")