Is anyone else tired of ROVs being called robots?

Heh, are you SURE you want to have that discussion?

What would you call a robot?

Well, I think if I’m driving it, flying it, or giving it step by step instructions it isn’t a robot.

So, I guess I would put some things into the robot category that others might not… for example, I’d consider an airliner with a sophisticated autopilot, capable of takeoff, flight, and landing autonomously a robot. While I would not consider a Predator drone being controlled by a human a robot.

I’d consider a roomba a robot, but not Asimo if it were being controlled remotely. However, Asimo acting autonomously would be a robot.

I’m not sure if I would call factory-robots robots. I’m not sure how scripted their movements are.

But, I think most people would agree that an RC plane is not a robot, and I don’t see how this is much different.

Willing to reconsider,

Mike

I think your point is valid (and let’s set aside for the moment the fact that I have to find “robots” to write about every day of the week) but here’s something potentially relevant to consider. ..

It sounds like for you, for something to be a robot, it has to be autonomous. In other words, it has to receive data and use that data to independently influence its actions. But all of that stuff is programmed in; in effect, a human is making the decisions in code, just not directly. It’s a sort of temporal remote control, but I guess the point I’m making is that the robot doesn’t really have emergent behavior, it’s just another form of robots executing human instructions, and in that respect, is it much different than a more traditional sort of remote control?

And then of course there’s the matter of degrees. Roombas are robots, but they don’t really make decisions (even in the code), they operate in more of a stimulus-response mode, with a bunch of if-than statements or somesuch.

To summarize, robots are like obscenity: you know it when you see it, and with a definition like that, there are bound to be differences in interpretation. Is a wind-up robot a robot? How about a pseudointelligent software program? It’s a pretty nebulous issue, but it’s fun to discuss, I think. If you want to call robots robots only if they have some autonomous capability, that’s perfectly fine, but I don’t think that that necessarily makes other systems less robot-y. Too bad it’s like 1 am and I still have to find some “robots” to write about tonight, or I’d go on :)

Hey Evan,

Thank you for finding all these things for our reading enjoyment. I just discovered your this site recently and am enjoying it. I certainly can understand the difficulty you would have finding robots (in any sense of the word) to write about every day, as I find myself having trouble finding ones to read about. Your site helps that out a lot.

I still enjoy articles on things that fall out of my definition of robots. Especially if they provide obvious stepping stones for my ideal robot.

I guess I do expect a robot to be software controlled and able to react to unplanned circumstances (even through scripted strategies). Like when my cat flops in front of the roomba and dares it to run over her. :)

So to play with some of your examples… a wind up toy robot wouldn’t be a robot. A software AI in charge of any mobile hardware would be. He’s a poser, is a robot still a robot you replace its physical hardware and sensors with a simulation?

Take care,

Mike

Wow, I wish my cats would do cute stuff with my Roomba, but so far they’ve hated every robot I’ve ever brought home.

In general, I agree with you, and if someone asked me to strictly define a robot, I’d probably say something about the appearance of autonomy in order to differentiate if from a remote controlled vehicle. But as a sometimes programmer, I’m also aware that autonomous robots are just executing a series of pre-encoded instructions. And most of the time, without analysis, I call something a robot if it either looks like a robot (including robot toys) or acts like a robot (which includes ComBots but not RC cars). Yeah, I know it’s sloppy, I know it doesn’t make sense, but at some point I just have to say, “that either looks like a robot or acts like a robot so I’m just going to call it a robot because I like robots.”

This sort of thing is deserving of a column, and fortunately someone with more experience than I has written one: David Calkins wrote an article for SERVO magazine about this very issue, and I’d recommend that you read that for another perspective. We’ve got an excerpt here: http://www.botjunkie.com/2008/05/23/robot-or-not/

I just read the excerpts, very much what we’re talking about.

Thanks,

Mike