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by charcircuit 1432 days ago
>a kid made a reasonable kid movement

What do you mean? There's no reasonable time where you and your opponent are touching the pieces at the same time. Nor is there a reasonable time where you reach for the same piece.

6 comments

Is it normal in chess to break fingers of an opponent who breaks rules? I think not. If it was not a robot but a human being he would be considered guilty. Yeah, boy broke chess rules, and what? He probably should be punished by losing chess points or something, but not by the means of breaking fingers. But the human who broke fingers of his opponent would be disqualified from chess for a life and would face charges. It is robot, it cannot be guilty, so someone else is. Who is? His creators? Or organizers of the event? Or parents of the kid who allowed him to go to face the robot? Some adults are guilty, not the boy.
Seven-year-old boys are known for always doing things that are reasonable, and never doing anything unreasonable.
He's "one of the top 30 chess players under nine in Moscow". Still the robot's fault, though.
So you're saying he's already done at least one unreasonable thing...
I agree especially since he "is among the top 30 chess players in Moscow under the age of nine."
It does not excuse such a reckless use of industrial equipment around people without appropriate failsafes.

A robotic arm like this not a toy, is a deadly machine with a lot of force and a lot of mass. If you were standing next to it for some reason it could unexpectedly swing around and break your neck in an instant. Engineers should be careful to design such systems with failsafes that account for any action the operator might take.

He’s still just a little kid. Even the most precocious kids are still kids.
Dude, children get antsy sometimes. They literally have different brain development than adults do. They do not have the same controls and inhibitions.

Children are literally wired for physical experimentation and echopraxia.

Kids also want to be seen as helping. If this robot put a piece down poorly, the kid might be trying to straighten up after it.

All of which are eminently reasonable for a kid who has no concept of operating around dangerous machinery.

Sure there is, like if you move a piece, hit the clock, then realise your piece wasn't quite centered on the square. Maybe not technically correct, but reasonable.
A robot isn't just going to grab your piece since the rules of the game state it has to move its own piece.
Oh, that settles it. Robot cannot do things that are outside of the rules of chess.

Kid should have known better than to open with the classic, "break my finger" opening from the regulation standard rules.

Industrial robotics are incredibly dangerous. They operate without concern for anything in their path. Robotic arms like this can be lethal, and the idea that the robot wouldn't ever do anything unusual is, quite frankly, laughable naive.

The problem isn't that the robot did anything unusual, it did exactly what it was supposed to do which is crush everything in its path.
It's a kid, my friend.
The penalty for an illegal move is maybe forfeit, not a broken finger.