Electrical engineers have nice definitions for the foundations of their field:<\/p>\n
We can define<\/p>\n
and so forth. \u00a0But in robotics every term is subject to change without notice. \u00a0There is no common definition of robot, or autonomy, or intelligence. \u00a0The only common element is that researchers are still, after three or four decades, able to argue about what the definitions ought to be.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, the discussions have died down from religious wars into cocktail party conversation, and the heated debates have largely transitioned from the definition of \u201crobot\u201d to the definition of \u201chumanoid\u201d or even whether topic X is \u201cfinished\u201d or not.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear whether the cessation of hostilities is due to weariness, to progress, or to maturity.<\/p>\n
We could just be tired of going round in circular arguments, from \u201cit has to do useful work\u201d to \u201centertainment is a job\u201d to \u201cbut it\u2019s a toy, not a robot\u201d.<\/p>\n
We might have reached a common core definition, so the arguments are in the details around the parameters of the definition. \u00a0Instead of arguing about the definition of robot as \u201cphysically instantiated self-contained machine that performs a task for a human\u201d we\u2019re arguing about the definition of \u201ctask\u201d and the definition of \u201cself-contained\u201d.<\/p>\n
Or we might have concluded that what\u2019s important is not that there be a single definition, but that individuals with something to say have the ability to say it clearly. \u00a0Instead of arguing when someone uses a non-standard definition, we simply accept it for the duration of the talk, or the paper, or the conversation, and try to understand the meat of what they\u2019re trying to say.<\/p>\n
The trouble is that whichever of these is the true answer, we are no closer to having an introductory textbook in robotics with a single definition that we can all agree is close enough to correct for it to be taught to beginning students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Electrical engineers have nice definitions for the foundations of their field: We can define electricity (http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Electricity), resistance (http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Electrical_resistance_and_conductance), current (http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Electric_current), voltage (http:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/voltage, for a change, but the definition’s not at all helpful so we’ll go to\u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Voltage after all) and so forth. \u00a0But in robotics every term is subject to change without notice. \u00a0There is no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foundations","category-terminology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robotistry.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robotistry.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robotistry.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robotistry.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robotistry.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/robotistry.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/robotistry.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robotistry.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robotistry.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robotistry.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}