Are they really robots?

[dlavery]

Back in 1976, Tom Sheridan (Emeritus, Prof Eng & Applied Psychology [Mech. Engr.], Prof Aero & Astro, Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- and former office-mate of Dr. Woodie Flowers) defined the term "Telerobot" as a device that exhibited the capabilities for either teleoperated control, autonomous control, or shared supervisory control between the two modalities (*1). Later, in 1992 (*2), he refined the definition with a clarification of supervisory control as "in the strictest sense, supervisory control means that one or more human operators are intermittently programming and continually receiving information from a computer that itself closes an autonomous control loop through artificial effectors to the controlled process or task environment."

Based on both the strict interpretation, and the intent, of Sheridan's terms, it seems that current FRC machines perfectly satisfy the definition of "telerobots." I would have no problem at all using that term to reference the devices we build. The only real implication of this is that the "FIRST Robotics Competition" ("FRC") will have to be renamed "FTC." The current "FTC" will have to find another acronym. I dunno, perhaps "FVC"?

-dave

*1 - NASA Telerobotics Program Plan, Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology, NASA Headquarters
*2 - Telerobotics, Automation, and Human Supervisory Control. MIT Press, Cambridge. p. 1. ISBN 9780262193160.



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