Ruling on Robonauts Balance

[wireties]

Originally Posted by bduddy

This is what happens when the GDC (or anyone else) tries to make "common-sense" rules or "simple" rules or anything of the sort. Discussion about "rules lawyering" or whatever misses the point: rules need to be clearly defined and as comprehensive as possible, or there's no point in having them. Otherwise you end up with differing interpretations and that very rarely ends well.

This argues both sides of the issue. "This is what happens when" versus "as comprehensive as possible". One absolute truth is that it is NOT possible (preivald - "they can't possibly anticipate every solution") to construct a set of rules that is 100% comprehensive. So every year there will always be some level of ambiguity. The engineer's response is to calculate the risk and make a decision.

The robonaut's device is ingenious (dare I say awesome). It was risky for consuming mass on the robot, money, time and effort etc. But the ramifications of it not working (or being illegal) was near zero because the robot is awesome without the feature. So risk of effort times risk of result is still near zero and they went for it. It was kewl to see it in action!