Are they really robots?

[EricH]

This has been brought up before, a few years ago. There's a couple of old threads on the topic. (I'm just too lazy to go look them up right now.)

Now, I'm going to counter that question with a simple question: If an industrial robot (say, for example, an automotive welder) is taught what it is supposed to do by being guided through its motions and then told, "OK, go do this and tell us if you break down" is not a robot when it is guided through its operation (because that involves direction from an operator), then should we say that whoever is marketing it as a robot is lying?

Or how about the Mars rovers? Do those count? After all, they are guided by human controllers here on earth. They just have a lot of autonomy over what they do--but they're still controlled.

I could go on with the list--PackBot and Talon come to mind, as do some flying unmanned "robots"--but if you're going to call our creations not robots, then you need to be prepared to call out all of the above as not robots as well. Just because something is remotely operated does not mean that it is not a robot.

Either that, or everybody is being fooled, not just high school students.

It may also be that the term "robot" has a wider meaning these days, probably because there isn't a nice short term for "smallish remotely-controlled device that moves around and does stuff".