BT-16 perimeter droid

"You seen that new VT-16?"
"Yeah, some of the other guys were telling me about it. They say it's… it's quite a thing to see…"

―KE-829 and his partner aboard the first Death Star^[3]

The BT-16 perimeter droid, also known as the VT-16, was a bulbous, spider-like droid manufactured by Arakyd Industries.

Characteristics[]

A BT-16 "B'omarr walker" in Jabba's palace.

The BT-16 came equipped with highly sensitive sensor packages, including a Fabritech seismic reader and a Carbanti motion detector. It was armed with a Taim & Bak repeating blaster cannon. The droid also featured a TranLang I Communication module and a vocabulator, though it was only able to speak droid languages.

History[]

"A fanatical religious organization that believed they could achieve true enlightenment by having their brains surgically removed and placed into spider droid bodies."

―Mayor Mikdanyell Guh'rantt, about the B'omarr Monks.^[src]

These droids were used by the Galactic Republic and later the Galactic Empire.

Early production runs reused the chassis of the TS-Arach series Pest Control Droid before the six-legged design was introduced. The B'omarr Monks used these droids to carry brains of those who had achieved "enlightenment" and for this they were sometimes called Brain walkers.^[4] The droids were occasionally equipped with vocoders, and lived in Jabba Desilijic Tiure's Palace until his death. The walkers generally went unarmed while carrying a brain, and had trouble doing anything beside walking.

One of the modified B'omarr version, seemingly without a brain, was present on Jib Kopatha's home, Void Station, in 0 ABY.

Behind the scenes[]

It is revealed in the non-canon story Tag & Bink Are Dead that Tag Greenley and Bink Otauna are the two stormtroopers who mention the BT-16 in the conversation posted above. However, as the story itself is non-canon, so is this information.

In Cynabar's Fantastic Technology: Droids, the picture of the BT-16 is a mirrored version of the TS-Arach series Pest Control Droid image from the same guide. The New Essential Guide to Droids established that early BT-16's reused the TS-Arach body, before the new design seen in the movie was introduced.