Newsgroups: comp.robotics
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From: clint.laskowski@mixcom.com (Clint Laskowski)
Subject: Will Dante make a better sex partner?
Message-ID: <clint.laskowski-050894080523@jjwwjj.mixcom.com>
Followup-To: comp.robotics
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Organization: Milwaukee Internet eXchange (MIX)
References: <1yXJqc1w165w@sfrsa.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 1994 14:05:22 GMT
Lines: 38

In article <1yXJqc1w165w@sfrsa.com>, bsmall@sfrsa.com (bsmall) wrote:

> I'm interested to know why a subject like "Will robots take
> jobs away?" can get so much comp.robotics attention, and, in
> contrast, the Dante II story is a veritable monologue.
>  
> Is the Dante II story to awesome for us to respond to? Can't
> we talk about 8 legs instead of 6? Or smaller machine vs.
> larger machines? Or, where did that 1.8 million dollars go
> to exactly? 
>  
> Just a thought
>  
> Brad Smallridge
> bsmall@sfrsa.com

Obviously, Dante II has been a great success and we all (well, at least I
do) applaud its performance and the team which made it possible. I think
three reasons it may not be getting much discussion in this forum are:

1) Dante II is not fully autonomous (at least as far as I know) and
teleoperated robots are less interesting (again, at least to me). This
comment is not meant to detract from the major success the Dante II team
has achieved at Mt. Spurr. That is why Brooks robots are more
interesting... they seem to be alive versus teleoperated.

2) Dante II is so far from the realm of hobbyist/university robots that the
average person reading this forum can never hope to work on a similar
project (or can they?).

3) Unless you have FTP or Mosaic'd (is that a word?) the Dante II technical
descriptions (which I haven't), you probably don't have much of an idea
about what Dante II looks like or how it operates. Is there someone who is
familiar with Dante II who would like to give us a brief technical
introduction?

Any other comments as to why we haven't been talking about Dante II very
much?  
