[JesseK]

Seems like the comment is arguing semantics, much like the IACNAP campaign or It's-Cement-Not-Concrete guys.

If we abstract the comment a bit, it's like the person is saying "nothing is a robot until everything is a robot". There's always a human in the loop with robots, even the DARPA Grand Challenge bots. The GC bots simply had the human intervention at programming time versus realtime.

From a human capital perspective, teleop versus autonomous doesn't matter. For teleop, we spend the time controlling the robot. For autonomous, we spend the time wondering why the robot didn't do what we wanted it to do. In the end it's about the same. (edit - same time. The autonomous requires a different skill set altogether)