🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov1.124016.12004@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:
>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

But wouldn't the robots been discussed here be operated remotely by
ground based people.  This way, there is no need to program much AI
into the system.  
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