!Robot Rodeo!

/*look ma, no plans*/

{

Place: Chase Hall;

Time: Wednesday April 11, 2012;

1:15pm-3:15pm;

Rain Location: 300 Dana;

}

Basic Braitenberg Vehicles:

BV2a:

fearful light avoider

BV2b:

aggressive light seeker

BV3a:

curious light seeker

BV3b:

curious but cautious explorer

Hybrid Braitenberg Vehicles:

BV3a-BV2a:

curiously approaches light to a threshold and then races away.

BV2b-BV3b:

races into the light to a threshold and then cooly walks away.

Animats:

Swiss Robots:

tidy ultrasound avoiders with serious blindspot

Squirt:

it would be preferable if the subroutine for seeking shadow wasn't a preset motor path –

e.g. compare the light sensor value at t₁ & t₂ to determine how to always move into the shadows

Flocking:

Search/Track/Flock

Alignment/Separation/Cohesion

WallFinder:

use auditory-visual crossmodal cues to differentiate the reflectance/luminance value of walls from pools of light in the corral environment

Biorobotics:

Crickets

simulate Barbara Webb's spiking neuron controller for cricket phonotaxis

*/

REMEMBER: the goal is to explore the animat/embodied strategies that we have been discussing in class. Braitenberg architectures lend themselves to this project because the actuator-control systems are always separate. Behavior emerges from morphological computations – agent/environment dynamics or the way the sensor input varies with agent movements. Behaviors are not directly programmed, but emerge from agent interactions with their environments. Where your solutions deviate from this strategy you need to understand how and whether this is justified by Webb's criteria for biorobotic modeling.

*/

(back to student collaborations)