§ On peer review and "A+B+C" papers
Wisdom written down by Guanya Shi .
- In today's AI and robotics community, paper publication should be viewed as a tool for sharing ideas, engaging with the research community, and providing helpful deadlines that cut through distractions and push our work forward.
- Paper publication is neither sufficient nor necessary for a research project to be meaningful, impactful, or high-quality.
- Technically, most (if not all) robotics papers are convex combinations of existing ideas. I still deeply appreciate A+B+C papers, especially when they deliver:
- New capabilities : the "trivial combination" unlocks behaviors we simply couldn't achieve before
- Sensible & organic design : A+B+C is clearly the right composition—not some arbitrary A′+B+C′
- Nontrivial interactions : careful analysis of the dynamics, coupling, or failure modes between A, B, C
- Rehabilitating old ideas : A was dismissed for years, but paired with modern B/C, it suddenly works—and teaches us why
- System-level & "interface" insight : the contribution is not any single piece, but how the pieces talk to each other
- Scaling laws or regimes : identifying when/why A+B+C works (and when it doesn't)
- Engineering clarity : making something actually work robustly in the real world is not "trivial"
- New problem formulations : sometimes the real novelty is in the reformulation—only under this view does A+B+C make sense.