Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!cs.uiuc.edu!kadie
From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M Kadie)
Subject: "That's not robotics; that's toy building"
Message-ID: <CBHzGn.DI6@cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 15:09:59 GMT
Lines: 28

One criticism I've heard of building little robots (such as those
build for the AAAI on-site building contest) it is not real robotics
but "toy building".

I think the problem here merely vocabulary. Does the field of robotics
have good phrases that distinish between robotics research and robot
building/customization?

Computer science, for example, has different phrases for computer
research (a computer science) and for customizing a computer for a new
task (programming). Note that neither phrase is pejorative.

Does robotics have phrases that make this distinction? Without them,
it is analogous to computer scientist and programmers fighting of the
right to use the word "computerist".

So:

Computer science is to programming as "_____" is to "_____".

                                   "Robotics is to robot building"?
                                   "Robot research is to robotics"?
                                   ???

- Carl
-- 
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent any organization; this is just me.
 = kadie@cs.uiuc.edu =
