kilian@cray.com (Alan Kilian) (06/01/91)
Oh, I've been having a great time with these Braitenburg vehicles.
I wrote a program that lets many vehicles exist on a plane full of
lights. Here's how it goes:
- There is an 800 x 800 inch plane
- There are up to ten vehicles on the plane.
- Each vehicle is a ten inch circle.
- Each vehicle has two motors and two wheels. The vehicles balance by magic.
- Each vehicle has up to ten light sensors pointing in various directions
and having various angle-of-views
- Each vehicle has a "brain" consisting of neurodes ala Braitenburg.
- Up to ten lights exist on the plane. Lights are 2 inch circles.
- Lights have various intensities.
- Lights can either walk randomly about the plane, stay put or teleport
from place to place whenever they feel like it.
- The plane is like a torous. If a vehicle drives off the top of the screen
it reappears at the bottom. If it drives off the left or right edge it
reappears on the other edge.
- Vehicles cannot see past the plane edge onto the other side of the plane.
- Vehicles don't run into lights or other vehicles.
You specify the neurode connections, thresholds, sensor and motor connections
in a set of files. Each robot can have a different "brain".
The program draws the plane, lights and robots using the X-Window system.
This program runs on a Sun SPARCstation IPC, but it should run just about
anywhere that uses UNIX and the X-Window system.
These vehicles really fly unless you place a speed regulator on them.
Here are some planned features:
- Vehicles can have lights on them controlled by neurodes.
- Vehicles can have a compass
- Vehicles can have "Vehicle" detectors instead of light detectors.
- Vehicles can have sound detectors.
- The motors on the vehicles make noise.
- Vehicles have light sensors pointing at the ground so they can see patterns
on the floor.
- Low battery alert
This is really so that I can fully simulate my next robot so I'll add things
to the simulation as I think them up.
Yes, you can have the program. BUT I won't send it to you unless you first
send me a neurode connection diagram that you want to try and tell me what you
think it will do.
If anyone wants to write a YACC parser for this I'd just love it. The parser
for the vehicle descriptions is pretty poor right now but it does everything
I want it to, so if I'm careful with my input I'm O.K.
I have ordered _Vehicles: Experiments in synthetic psycology_ by
Valentino Braitenburg MIT Press and I just can't wait until it shows up.
If you have any further ideas for this simulation I would love to hear them.
I won't send out any copies for about two weeks because I will be travelling
and getting "real" work done for a short time. So please be patient.
Let's hear some more stories about robots you folks have made.
I'll be at the BEAM olympics on Ontario in October and I'd like to meet
some of you. Let's plan a USENET dinner or somesuch.
Have fun, electronics are practically free nowadays,
-Alan Kilian
--
-Alan Kilian kilian@cray.com 612.683.5499
Cray Research, Inc. | If god had meant us to use the metric system
655 F Lone Oak Drive | he would have given us ten finger and ten
Eagan MN, 55121 | toes. The author of _Lighter Elements_