Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!rochester!sol!yamauchi From: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) Newsgroups: comp.robotics Subject: Re: Request for Feedback on Proposed Lunar Analog Robotics Contest Message-ID: Date: 7 Feb 91 03:21:16 GMT References: <778@sousa.enet.dec.com> <20916@sri-unix.SRI.COM> Sender: news@cs.rochester.edu (Usenet news) Organization: University of Rochester Lines: 27 In-Reply-To: larson@snmp.sri.com's message of 6 Feb 91 21:02:56 GMT In article <20916@sri-unix.SRI.COM> larson@snmp.sri.com (Alan Larson) writes: If you are going to require small size for the lunar robot contest, and limit the power sources to lunar capable ones, allowing wire connections or local visual observations is a bit imbalanced. I agree -- if you really want to demonstrate the feasibility of *small* lunar probes, you should prohibit either tethers or local observations. All necessary processing and/or communications hardware should be onboard. It would be particularly unfair to allow teleoperated vehicles to use tethers or local observations and not to allow autonomous robots to do their processing on external hardware (connected via tethers). On the other hand, if what you're interested in is demonstrating the capabilities of AI algorithms and/or teleoperation for lunar exploration, then you could remove all restrictions on the the hardware (size, power, tethers, etc.) Though, I still think a 2-3 second delay should be implemented on the teleoperated systems and local observations should be prohibited. -- _______________________________________________________________________________ Brian Yamauchi University of Rochester yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Department of Computer Science _______________________________________________________________________________