Fons automita

Excerpt from the diary of head researcher Michael Intelo:

When my father gave me that wind up soldier for my 6th birthday, I would march him across the kitchen table and laugh with glee as he stomped into the butter, I didn't think that one day I would see all that hard work, all that knowledge be proven futile. With this, discovery, automatons will never again need such a clunky external power source, no more are all their innards filled with oversized mechanisms and power storage. Now there is room for more complex devices and additional features.
I call it 'Fons Automita' after the old word for Source, as the automita has it's own power source. the beauty is the simplicity of it's individual elements, that come together to create a complex superstructure. As the functions of a heart is a simple pump, the function of fons is a simple power cell, widely known as a crystal; the primary challenge we faced was getting the power transfer down to a manageable and continuous level.
Already my sponsors have showed their hands, thinly veiled questions on uptime and redundancy to the systems, "John, how much damage could one of these take and still work?" I know what they want, they want to weaponize my creations.
This wasn't to improve farming in poor areas, this wasn't for dangerous construction and mining jobs, this was for war; I feel a fool for not realising it.

Utility

Initial testing involved traversing different terrain types, carrying increasing weights for a distance, coordination and reflex testing. The next round of testing will involve complex motor skills, such as digging a hole, building a wall and firing a bow.

Manufacturing

Current production is still at the pre manufacture stage, each automita has been hand made by the scientists themselves, specifications for mass production are being drafted as the design is finalised.

Access & Availability

Under a military bursary, the team in Tavlocks research centre have discovered a way of powering automatons without need for an uninterrupted external source.

Complexity

The beauty of this discovery is in it's simplicity, the team put aside much of the current thinking and historic assumptions. Beginning from scratch on fundamental principles they built increasingly complex circuits of crystals, motors and pistons, until finally the circuits took on a form of their own.

Discovery

Penniless and down on his luck, an ex artificer build a simple crystal circuit and encased it in a wooden puppet, which he used to amaze crowds around Capital 'the puppet with no strings' was of a very simple design however was sufficient to gain the interest of the Tavelock research institute.