Newsgroups: comp.robotics
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From: hougen@knife.cs.umn.edu (Dean Hougen)
Subject: Re: testing the waters for split of comp.robotics
Message-ID: <Cv4ox4.ECC@news.cis.umn.edu>
Summary: Sounds like a good idea to me.
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Date: Fri, 26 Aug 1994 05:55:50 GMT
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In article <33i7iq$3e6@jaws.cs.hmc.edu> bgribble@jarthur.cs.hmc.edu (Bill Gribble) writes:
>In article <3947@ucl-cs.uucp>,
>Stephanie Warrick <S.Warrick@cs.ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
>>I agree that a rerouting of 'Where can I find gizmos?' postings would 
>>encourage more theoretical discussion on this list, and personally I'd 
>>welcome this. I'd suggest creating a comp.robotics.engineering sublist
>>and leaving comp.robotics as the list for all other postings.
>
>First, I think that the total volume of postings on this groups is 
>too small to justify splitting the group.  

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but I'll take two stabs at it.

Perhaps you mean that splitting this group would result in one or both
of the resulting groups not having sufficient traffic to justify its
existence.

This logic is often called up to argue against splits.  Unfortunately,
its a largely bogus argument.  There is only a very minimal cost
associated with having more newsgroups, so it is silly to argue that
some minimum volume must be reached in order to justify another group.


Alternately, you may mean that the small volume of the group does not
make searching through the posts a burden.  Well, maybe that is true
for you, but that is not necessarily true for the rest of us.

Please note that what makes searching through a group (for material
that you find interesting) worthwhile or not, is *not* the total 
volume of the group.  Its the *ratio* of posts of interest to total
posts.  If a group only has one post a day, but only one in 1000
posts is of interest to you, then it is a pain to read the group in
search of interesting posts.

For me, the ratio of posts of interest to total is fairly low and,
as a result, following this group is rather a pain.


>Second, if you want to encourage a theoretical discussion, start one. 
>I think the atmosphere in this newsgroup is very amicable to theory,
>but people are keeping to themselves.  

The reason theory people are keeping to themselves, I'd guess, is
because there aren't that many of us here.  And the reason for that?
Its a pain for us to read the group (see above) so, quite often, we 
don't.

So it works like this.  Most theory people find the group, look at
a selection of postings, decide that the group is all practical, and
never read it again.

Now and then a person with more perserverence comes along.  This
person brings up a theoretical question, but none of the few theory
people here is all that interested in that particular aspect of
theory, so nobody answers.  The person who posted the question
decides that the group is for practical maters only and discontinues 
reading it.

Once in a great while, someone with great perserverence comes along.
This person wades through posts for months, finding only tidbits of
what he or she is interested in, then finally decides its not worth
the effort.

The result?  The number of theory people never grows.


>While I am personally not interested in building Lego robots or micropower 
>robots, I find it interesting to see what people are doing to push 
>the technology, even if it's not in a direction that I'm pushing.  With
>tiny creatures like these, the physical manifestation of the thing is 
>the interesting part.

Great.  Then after a split you can read both groups.


>Robotics -- especially the type of robotics most people here are interested
>in, that being the autonomous or situated-agent type -- is firmly grounded
>in the idea that the real world is the final arbiter of whether your theory
>is valid or just another loony AI paper.  Discussion of the tools and
>techniques of building actual robots has an honored place on equal
>intellectual footing with discussions of autonomous agent theory.  To 
>ghettoize it to a ``sub'' group is to say in effect that a lego robot 
>is less important than a simulated checkerboard walker robot with a 
>simulated sonar sensor which just happens to not be affected by specular 
>reflection.   My opinion is that the former is a real experiment, the
>latter is a rigged experiment, so one is good science and the other is 
>bad science.

Give me a break!  Nobody is trying to "ghettoize" building robots.
You may remember that the originator of this thread suggested a 
straight split into .theory and .practice, each at an equal level
of the hierarchy.  Does that idea bother you?  What about leaving
comp.robotics right where it is and adding comp.robotics.theory,
or would that be exclusionary and placing theory above practice?

Its obvious that you realize that you have no good intellectual
arguments against a split and are simply going for emotional ploys.


>I'll vote against a newsgroup split.

Its likely that I'll vote for a split, if and when it comes to that,
but I'll wait to make my decision until there has been a reasoned
discussion of the issues and there is an actual call for votes in
front of me.


As for what counts as good science and bad science, I think there
is a lot to be said for trying out AI ideas on real robots.  I've
just come back from a conference where a colleague and I presented
work we had done on a real robot, and now we are extending that
work for a journal submission.  We are also starting work on 
another project that will use a real robot.  Both robots were
built pretty much from scratch in our lab (the AI, Robotics, and
Vision Lab -- AIR-VL -- at the U of MN).

However, *I* am a theory person, and I really can't follow much
of the discussion that takes place in this group and I really have
no desire to.  I'm glad that I've got hardware people to work on
projects with, or I'd be stuck doing everything in simulation.

The hardware people in our groups are likewise glad to have us 
theory people to work with, or their robots would just sit still 
and gather dust.  I know from talking to them, however, that 
they have no interest in the details of our theories.

People able to stand in both worlds, of course, are free to do so,
but to cram them together into the same space is not reasonable.


>Bill Gribble

Dean Hougen
--
"Perfect system, we're all brother to the end."  - Oingo Boingo
