Catch that Rabbit

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"Catch that Rabbit" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov that was first published in the February 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the collections I, Robot (1950) and The Complete Robot (1982).

Summary

The recurring team of Powell and Donovan are in charge of field tests on an asteroid mining station with a robot, DV-5 (Dave). But the robot stops producing ore, and cannot explain why. The robot is a new model with six subsidiary robots under its control (they are described as fingers) via positronic fields, a means of transmission not yet fully understood by roboticists. When they secretly observe the robot, it starts performing strange marches and dances with its subsidiaries whenever something unexpected happens. It is up to the two field testers to figure out why Dave is acting the way he is. This observation-dependent behavior alteration, hindering the resolution of the robots' behavioral bug, makes it an early example of a Heisenbug. The reason is that the main robot had too many subsidiary robots under his control. This overloaded his brain capacity, so when ever there is an avelance the pressure increases, and he danced. The other robots do not know why they are dancing and when interrogated one mentioned that they received an order but before they could get it they were told to dance. Powell and Donovan spend days watching them on the telescreen then follow them to find out what the original order was till they realize it doesn't matter when they get trapped in a cave in when trying to stimulate the dancing from the robots. Why did the robots stop dancing when the humans were watching them? Because when the humans where around, the robots where put under pressure of the second law (A robot must obey humans). The robots could not directly disobey the humans orders when the humans where watching them.

Here, Asimov anthropomorphises by having a robot twiddle its thumbs when it finds itself overwhelmed by its job. (Which is to say that one of the characters draws that analogy; how seriously Asimov meant it is unclear.) In many cases, robopsychology - personified by Susan Calvin - runs parallel to human psychology. For instance, at this point in I, Robot we have already seen hysteria and religious mania.