🚀 go-pugleaf

>>> On 9 Jan 93 10:13:13 GMT, yamauchi@ces.cwru.edu (Brian Yamauchi) said:


BY> I'm impressed with what the Ambler group has accomplished, and very
BY> impressed with what the Erebus group accomplished in a very short
BY> amount of time.  I think they deserve a great deal of credit, despite
BY> the unfortunate glitch that ended the test.

I'm sorry, I must have been napping during the Erebus accomplishment.
What did the trip to Erebus do that couldn't have been done on a 30
meter slag heap near Pittsburgh?  Teleoperation?  That could be done
with a programmable delay.

The truly impressive accomplishment is that the robot was built in one
year.  Everyone in the project deserves recognition for that.

But in my opinion, the choice of testing area and testing methodology
was incredibly poor, serving only as a media magnet.  Imagine a
biologist performing an experiment while juggling test tubes on a
trampoline.  If the experiment worked, it would be truly impressive.
Not because of the scientific results, but because the experimenter
overcame the completely unnecessary self-imposed barriers.





--
Mike Bolotski          MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
misha@ai.mit.edu       Cambridge, MA 02139     (617) 253-8170