🚀 go-pugleaf

Two more cents: The debate over "microvers" (whatever they are) and
"not microvers" seems to miss the mark here, in my opinion.

In article <C0nwnE.1w2.1@cs.cmu.edu> lalit+@CS.CMU.EDU (Lalitesh Katragadda) writes:
>   The primary purpose of Dante was not to build a Robot but to fulfill
>   a mission that was till now not possible (see below).

If data collection on Erebus is the objective, then Dante's primary
purpose was not achieved, right?  The conclusion is "well, we learned
something", which is nothing to sneeze at, but it again begs the
question: why couldn't you do all this on a suitable environment in
Pittsburgh?

>   a) Proximity sensors ...
>   b) A unique polar laser range finder...
>   c) Teleoperation...
>   d) Software for robot simulation...
>   e) A science package...
>   f) A new kind of walking mechanism...

All are good goals, but none of this seems to require a trip to
Antarctica.  Only (e) appears to be directly *related* to the stated
objective.  Could some simpler scheme have been used to collect data?
Why wouldn't 1 or more tethered radiosonde balloons work?

I don't know very much about this project, aside from the press
releases, but it seems to me to be two separate projects (robot
development and Erebus data) inappropriately crammed into one.
Admittedly, I'm a naive spectator, but that's the way it looks on the
surface.
-- 
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Christopher Ian Connolly			connolly@cs.umass.edu
Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics		wa2ifi
University of Massachusetts at Amherst		Amherst, MA 01003