Skutters

Skutters are service and maintenance robots that stand at around 2 feet (61 cm) tall, appearing as motorized boxes with a single limb each, ending in a three-clawed hand with an electronic eye.

They perform menial tasks around the ship, such as sweeping the cinema floors after a movie, or painting the corridor walls.

Skutters are incapable of speech (beyond making bleeping noises), but can usually make their feelings clear.

Their hands are particularly well designed for giving "flipping the bird" gestures with one or two digits.

Operating with a basic semi-autonomous A.I., they understand voice commands, and are able to articulate more complex statements by writing them out with a pencil and paper, play some musical instruments (e.g. keyboards), engage in simple games (such as draughts, or cowboys-and-indians) etc

Their behaviour is rather more human-like than might be expected for such crudely designed robots; they enjoy watching films, are highly emotional and occasionally appear to be somewhat unstable and prone to malfunction, presumably as a result of three million years of continuous operation.

It is unknown exactly how many functional skutters remain on The Red Knight as pairs of skutters (a "male" and a "female") are capable, in extremis, of creating small replicas (baby skutters) of themselves from salvaged tech around the ship.

Under the guidance of the ship's A.I., the skutters - along with garbage droids - were responsible for The Red Knight's maintenance during its 3,000,000 year voyage away from Earth.

Unlike many other mechanicals, skutters are not fitted with a chip to make them believe in Silicon Heaven; this was to save money during production.

Due to this they find the concept comical, and only something stupid mechanoids believe in.