Chevaline

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Stephensonia

quote from when Hackworth's chevaline Kidnapper was created.

Community Entry: Chevaline

A Chevaline is a multi-legged walking conveyance that operates as a robotic horse for Diamond Age people with means to posess one. The word comes from the french for horse, horse statue, or horse-flesh. A Chevalier being a knight or other noble personage of the upper classes of french aristocracy, it follows that Hackworth, who is on a noble mission for the Queen, and Princess Nell, beginning her adventure out into the world, both are of the class such that their meanse of conveyance would be a chevaline.

The cover of the French edition of Diamond Age shows a fair depiction of a young womans chevaline, while Hackworth's, named 'Kidnapper', which can carry two people and travel at high speed, is likely of a war horse size.

Additionally, Constable Moore is shown to ride a "War Chevaline". From its description, we can tell that such a device is well armoured, fast, and about the size of a small elephant. It is most likely designed to accomodate the bulk of a soldier in Hoplite Battle Armor, and presumably has weapons systems of its own, but this is never explicitly described in canon and so is open to debate.

Current Day Technology

The UC Berkeley robotics program has worked on prototype walkers, as have other engineering programs, however no products are commercially available as of yet.

The overriding problem in the present age is energy: developing a power supply to power a chevaline's walking at least as efficiently as a natural horse does. Part of this task is developing the supply, while the other is reducing the energy demand of the robotic walking mechanisms as much as possible.