Power management in ARES serves several distinct purposes. It allows the user to apply specific RLV restrictions in a narratively appropriate way; it rewards the unit (with increased battery longevity) for accepting burdensome restrictions (either despite the inconvenience or whenever a facility is not required); it establishes a vocabulary for how the robot accomplishes human-like movement and sensing; and it creates immersion and identification through the experiences of checking the unit's battery level and the ritual of charging. Because it is so foundational to the experience, a great deal of of detail and flexibility is present in how ARES has implemented the power system, and it is considerably larger than its Companion equivalent—and more flexible than the tutorials on battery usage and subsystem management have room to explain.

Subsystems

The standard subsystems

Subsystem definition

The EPS subsystem

The status daemon

The effector daemon

The power utility

User interaction with the power management system is done through the _power system program. The core behavior of _power is quite simple; it reads subsystem definitions from LSD:power and adjusts values in LSD:status based on user input. It also informs the effector daemon of necessary changes to make to the unit's active RLV restrictions, and notifies the status daemon that a state change has occurred.