Newsgroups: comp.robotics.misc
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From: eee@netcom.com (Mark Thorson)
Subject: Re: Human form robot
Message-ID: <eeeEE36I3.5Mz@netcom.com>
Organization: Netcom
References: <33DD66EE.167E@student.qut.edu.au>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 15:18:03 GMT
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Sender: eee@netcom7.netcom.com

In article <33DD66EE.167E@student.qut.edu.au>,
John Williams  <ja.williams@student.qut.edu.au> wrote:
>
>I couldn't tell if it had an umbilical cord, or was fully autonomous /
>radio controlled.  Damn television news - never give you any real
>information.

I saw that film too, and I'm suspicious that this was
actually a teleoperator.  The movements just seemed
too human.

That doesn't mean it's not an impressive piece of
engineering.  A humanoid two-way force-feedback system
that allows such good movements is very impressive.
But an AI that allows truly autnomous movements
would be a fantastic breakthrough.  I'm skeptical
that they have achieved that.

Another possibility is that it has some amount of
autonomy for dealing with stairs, non-level surfaces,
etc. sufficient to allow a user-friendly form of
teleoperation.  That would be sort of in-between
on the fantastic breakthrough scale.


