Patent Differentiation: Science Fiction

It had to do something, something arguably integral to the robot's function. It couldn't just be a piece of metal tacked on the outside. He thought. At first he thought of rerouteing the motor functions through a core in the center of the robot instead of through the main processing unit, but then he remembered that the Smith&Wesson R&D division had patented one like that just a few months ago. He sighed. It really was ridiculous the lengths they had to go to in order to differentiate what really was essentially the same type of robot. Finally, he decided to have a unique counting system, that summed all things up and ran repeated tallies on its surroundings and data to ensure number consistency.

Inspiration: The robotics panel at CONvergence.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: So, figure that all these people have to keep adding functional differences to their robots, and somehow that adds up to something more, either by combining or by producing different effects. Could also just be part of the background of another story.