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Eventually, we got to the point where we don’t know what Pleo will do next because he learns. If Caleb and I went to your house to see your Pleo, we couldn’t predict a lot of the things he would do, even though we know everything we put in him. Pleo has the ability to change and figure things out on his own.

Consumers will be able to download and customize Pleo later this year or early next year. We want to give the user the ability to change Pleo’s personality, animations and tricks. We also want to allow developers and hobbyists to take the SDK and motion system and behavior system and choreograph advanced features and animations for new AI functionality.

The only way you can create life is to give it choice. Life is very complex, and it has to evolve, otherwise it is a robot. The only way to get complex systems to work is to let them chose for themselves.

We didn’t include a camera (or voice recognition) in Pleo because of the price point for the product. Pleo is probably a good hack for a CMU camera, and we want people to develop these sorts of things.

three-layer systems.

if a robot needs to plan ahead, it does so in a network of behaviors which talk to each other and send information around, rather than a single planner, as with hybrid systems.

Deliberative Control: Think hard, then act. Reactive Control: Don't think, (re)act. Hybrid Control: Think and act independently, in parallel. Behavior-Based Control: Think the way you act.

These above rules handle all of the commands and expressions of the iLogo language except for the DoUnlessCommand. This command will execute a list of commands unless a boolean condition is met. If so, control is switched to a new list of commands for handling the exception condition.

Each stage of the compiler is designed using the Visitor pattern described in the book Design Pattern by Eric Gamma, et al. This pattern allows tree traversers to be created as seperated objects, instead of doing all traversals as methods of the nodes of the tree

We decided to use the JavaCC/JJTree tools created by Sun for generating a custom parser for our iLogo language written in Java.

The language must have primitives which allow the user of the language to write programs which easily transfer control based upon outside stimuli, in this case sensors on the truck.

An LM18293 push-pull motor driver connects the programmable counter array (PCA) of the 8051 to the truck's motors.

We took the Berkeley Logo language design as our base and then added a primitive for reading sensor and an exception-based control structure.

The way to get rid of noise is get a bunch of readings, then only keep the average. Make sure you test for noise in the actual environment your robot will be in

When ALI bumps into something it will go backward for a short time and then go forward in another direction, so they will find their way all alone.

The first one is a light seeker and the second one is a line follower. This version I like very much.

When you are making the line follower you need to place the small light bulb. The light seeker doesn't need it.

When bumbing into something it can also reverse for several seconds. The time of going reverse can be changed. I've used 2M2 and 3,3 uF, this will give a reverse time of about 5 seconds

For the LED’s you can almost use any type or color, I used red ones 5 mm.

When you "power on" Bully it will first go backwards for some time. After a few seconds it seems that it doesn’t know what to do, it looks like it’s shivering. Then it starts of going to the brightest lightspot it can see, first slowly and then like "in a hurry". When it reaches the lightspot it makes turns which make it look like it’s happy! In the time doing all this stuff, each bump into a obstacle makes it move backwards for a few seconds. The time doing this can be changed with the 10 uF elco. Smaller means less seconds and bigger means reversing for more seconds.

The diodes between the  photo-diodes create a constant voltage drop between the inputs of the inverters. They cause  a dead band to exist between the thresholds of the two inverters. In a way they cause the circuit to act like a kind of window  comparator. Without these diodes both inverters would always be in the same state. With them, there is a small range where their outputs are in opposite states.

The Slave section has only two diodes (or one LED) between the photo-diodes. This makes it respond to smaller differences in light levels than does the Master part of the circuit

Basically, what I did was to stack one SC-H on top of another

I?m using a 74 HC 139 to direct the outputs of the M/S SC-H circuit to the appropriate motor(s)

Cheesy works very well. I?ve had fun making him chase a spot of light from a flashlight around on the floor. He has even been able to detect and react to the flashlight spot on the floor of the brightly lighted lab where I work.