🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct31.023129.9034@access.usask.ca> choy@skorpio.usask.ca (I am a terminator.) writes:
>Can robots be launched to build the space station? They can work overtime.

People will depend heavily on robotic assistance for many tasks in space.
However, an incident at the local Glad bag plant last night applies. A
new robotic assembly line had just been started in the last month and 
all was going well with bags being produced and boxed. Then last night a 
temperature change caused a slight change in frictional coefficient, sound
familiar? The robot started launching hot air balloons instead of neatly
boxed bags. By the time the shift supervisor woke up, two trainees were 
chasing bag balloons all over the plant. They lost an hour's production
and several thousand dollars worth of bags before the line was stopped
and the bag blow pressure reduced slightly. The robots just kept mindlessly
doing what they were told, even when it was disasterously wrong. On the
old machines, the human operator would have just held the blow pedal down
for slightly less time and bags would have continued to be produced.

The moral of this story is that robotics is not yet adaptive enough to
unexpected conditions to operate without waste and possible harm in less
than critically supervised operations.

Gary