A map, not a pitch. PolieBotics is a family of projector-camera and, more generally, emitter-detector instruments built on a single construct: the Reality Kernel, a parameterised physical channel that emits a committed probe, observes a scene's response, and folds that response forward into the next probe. In its canonical form the kernel is fully continuous and analogue: probe and response are exchanged as radio-frequency and optical signals, and temporal order is established by mutual analogue timestamping between participating instruments, without any obligatory discrete or cryptographic component. A discrete, digital instantiation can be layered on top, but it is optional rather than constitutive. The entry points below are organised by interest; each indicates which of the three layers to consult, and where a result is scoped, the scope travels with it.
The three layers (kept deliberately apart):
The central object is the Reality Kernel: a closed emit→observe→commit loop expressed as a parameterised - and, in the analogue embodiment, trainable - Markov kernel. The instrument places and focuses a committed probe under a time-indexed schedule, reads the scene's response, and folds the two together, so that the channel's behaviour is conditioned on controls a later observer can reconstruct. The canonical embodiment is continuous and analogue, its temporal order supplied by mutual analogue timestamping between instruments rather than by an external discrete clock. The richer analogue embodiments are set out in the filings, with their physical envelope still being characterised. Begin with the Reality Kernel for the formalism and the apparatus.
The construct is a bounded case study in that question. It separates what an ordered, mutually-timestamped record of a physical exchange can establish - that a real instrument interacted with a scene in a recoverable order - from what it cannot: the truth of the scene itself, since a faithful recording of a staged event remains a faithful recording. Holding the continuous (analogue) and discrete (digital) embodiments distinct, and scoping every claim to what was actually measured, is itself the object of interest. Begin with the regimes and the assurance model.
A printable probe design - the hinged DFCP SPHERIC revision of the PolieProboscis (body, top cover, hinge pins) - is provided as an STL archive, alongside the reference rig it models (an EKB RGB DLP projector hardware-triggering an Imaging Source camera through a 16 mm lens). This revision corrects the prior model, whose body sat marginally low to close cleanly over the projector; it is provided as a refined geometry to print and iterate from. The proboscis/ files sit in the technology repository at data.poliebotics.com; the project welcomes those who bring their own instrument and attempt to falsify the protocol.
One discrete instantiation of the kernel - the digital Truth Beam - has been carried through to a released, recomputable result that renders a recording tamper-evident after the fact. That evidence layer is maintained separately, so that the canonical theory presented here does not lean on it and it remains independently checkable. See truthbeam.com for the demonstrated instance and the means to verify it.
There is an imaginal layer - the co-creative PoliePals world, entered as Iris, Eve, Demeter or Harmonia - together with the author's first-person testament, offered as testimony and never as proof. It is kept rigorously apart from the technology, so that the science never rests on the story and the story is free to be a story. Begin at poliepals.com, and treat your own engagement with reality as the final authority - the one principle all three layers share.
Notes that apply throughout: the analogue embodiments are enabled in the filings rather than demonstrated, and their performance envelope is still being characterised; the patent filings are authoritative on themselves; and most of this prose is LLM-generated and is therefore a derived, lossy rendering - where it matters, verify against the filings and the primary records.
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