The FT-2 is a factory assembly automaton — a stationary platform with four articulated arms, each terminating in precision manipulators capable of handling components as small as 2 millimeters. It performs repetitive assembly tasks on production lines with speed and accuracy that human hands cannot match: placing microchips, soldering connections, assembling subsystems, testing circuits, and packaging finished products. A single FT-2 performs the work of twelve human assembly workers at three times the speed with a defect rate approaching zero.

TESSERA uses FT-2 units in its own manufacturing facilities and sells them to every other manufacturer in GLMZ. The units are ubiquitous in industrial production — they build the components that go into other automata, the electronics in consumer devices, the precision parts for vehicles and weapons and medical equipment. The FT-2 is the machine that builds the machines. Its impact on the industrial economy is so total that it has become invisible, a baseline assumption rather than a notable technology.

The human cost is quantifiable and TESSERA quantifies it in their annual reports as a point of pride: each FT-2 unit deployed eliminates an average of 12.3 manufacturing jobs. TESSERA has deployed approximately 40,000 FT-2 units across GLMZ's industrial sector. The arithmetic is straightforward and devastating. TESSERA's shareholder communications describe this as 'labor optimization.' The half-million displaced workers describe it differently.