The recent meta discussion about the auv, uav, ugv and (possible) drone tag taxonomy, and my subsequent suggested tag wiki edits (still pending as I write this) got me thinking about whether we should consider remotely control vehicles on topic on Robotics.

My initial reaction was that no, ROVs probably shouldn't be on topic, and should probably be referred to Electrical Engineering stack exchange - so my tag wikis reflect that. On second thoughts though, I'm not so sure and I think it is worth discussing.

During definition, we only had a single example tele-presence question suggested (as far as I can see) and it received no votes either way, so that doesn't help.

Considering the similarities, I can see that many of the control elements of autonomous and remotely operated vehicles are similar, if not the same and many of the engineering challenges for autonomous mobile robots are identical to that of remote controlled mobile robots.

Having said that, I was always disappointed that Robot Wars was as much, if not more, about the driver of each robot than it was the robot itself. I wanted to see real robots battling it out using their own sensors and their own autonomous decision making processes to win the day.

Then there are the grey areas, remotely operated vehicles which take their higher level control from a human operator, but do significant on-board processing to make them stable and hold position when not being actively controlled. These feel to me like they should be on topic, as they could easily be a stepping stone to or a component of an autonomous system.

The recent meta discussion about the auv, uav, ugv and (possible) drone tag taxonomy, and my subsequent suggested tag wiki edits (still pending as I write this) got me thinking about whether we should consider remotely control vehicles on topic on Robotics.

My initial reaction was that no, ROVs probably shouldn't be on topic, and should probably be referred to Electrical Engineering stack exchange - so my tag wikis reflect that. On second thoughts though, I'm not so sure and I think it is worth discussing.

During definition, we only had a single example tele-presence question suggested (as far as I can see) and it received no votes either way, so that doesn't help.

Considering the similarities, I can see that many of the control elements of autonomous and remotely operated vehicles are similar, if not the same and many of the engineering challenges for autonomous mobile robots are identical to that of remote controlled mobile robots.

Having said that, I was always disappointed that Robot Wars was as much, if not more, about the driver of each robot than it was the robot itself. I wanted to see real robots battling it out using their own sensors and their own autonomous decision making processes to win the day.

Then there are the grey areas, remotely operated vehicles which take their higher level control from a human operator, but do significant on-board processing to make them stable and hold position when not being actively controlled. These feel to me like they should be on topic, as they could easily be a stepping stone to or a component of an autonomous system.

The recent meta discussion about the auv, uav, ugv and (possible) drone tag taxonomy, and my subsequent suggested tag wiki edits (still pending as I write this) got me thinking about whether we should consider remotely control vehicles on topic on Robotics.

My initial reaction was that no, ROVs probably shouldn't be on topic, and should probably be referred to Electrical Engineering stack exchange - so my tag wikis reflect that. On second thoughts though, I'm not so sure and I think it is worth discussing.

During definition, we only had a single example tele-presence question suggested (as far as I can see) and it received no votes either way, so that doesn't help.

Considering the similarities, I can see that many of the control elements of autonomous and remotely operated vehicles are similar, if not the same and many of the engineering challenges for autonomous mobile robots are identical to that of remote controlled mobile robots.

Having said that, I was always disappointed that Robot Wars was as much, if not more, about the driver of each robot than it was the robot itself. I wanted to see real robots battling it out using their own sensors and their own autonomous decision making processes to win the day.

Then there are the grey areas, remotely operated vehicles which take their higher level control from a human operator, but do significant on-board processing to make them stable and hold position when not being actively controlled. These feel to me like they should be on topic, as they could easily be a stepping stone to or a component of an autonomous system.

The recent meta discussion about the auv, uav, ugv and (possible) drone tag taxonomy, and my subsequent suggested tag wiki edits (still pending as I write this) got me thinking about whether we should consider remotely control vehicles on topic on Robotics.

My initial reaction was that no, ROVs probably shouldn't be on topic, and should probably be referred to Electrical Engineering stack exchange - so my tag wikis reflect that. On second thoughts though, I'm not so sure and I think it is worth discussing.

During definition, we only had a single example tele-presence question suggested (as far as I can see) and it received no votes either way, so that doesn't help.

Considering the similarities, I can see that many of the control elements of autonomous and remotely operated vehicles are similar, if not the same and many of the engineering challenges for autonomous mobile robots are identical to that of remote controlled mobile robots.

Having said that, I was always disappointed that Robot Wars was as much, if not more, about the driver of each robot than it was the robot itself. I wanted to see real robots battling it out using their own sensors and their own autonomous decision making processes to win the day.

Then there are the grey areas, remotely operated vehicles which take their higher level control from a human operator, but do significant on-board processing to make them stable and hold position when not being actively controlled. These feel to me like they should be on topic, as they could easily be a stepping stone to or a component of an autonomous system.