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What if the obstacle is at the edge of a canyon? It will suicide :D

Not to worry, the drone flying ahead will already have mapped the terrain :)

And tagged you as its next kill :p

> What if the obstacle is at the edge of a canyon? It will suicide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump

Baby steps. A fully terrain aware robot will be very complicated. Breaking it down into discrete goals only makes sense.

> there will be cases they have missed in which it will fail

i.e., parity with real life.

Robot suicide, what an interesting prospect. I can't think of any surer sign that and entity has achieved consciousness, than when it makes the decision to end its own "life".

Meh, programs suicide all the time when they access memory locations not in their space.

The contentious nature of consciousness is in the "makes the decision" part of your statement, suicide is pretty mundane as far as decisions go.