Robotics

robot learning

variable delay

short-term memory

It's simply a Phototropic BiCore driving two small motors

I had to add resistors across the motor leads to slow them down! I got this idea from Ben Hitchcock's Fred Troubleshooting Page -- "D) If the motor fires strongly once..."

It's practically impossible to solder the FLEDs straight using only your hands

This part is rather tricky because there's so little space between the Solar Engine and the 3300uF Cap. -- You can leave more space here if you like, but it just looks better if you keep it all nice and tight

Find two FLEDs with the same (or very similar) resistance

The Nv neuron circuit may look familiar as it is found in most CMOS data handbooks as an example of a simple edge detector or one-shot or mono-stable circuit application.

The purpose of a solar engine is to act like a power "savings account" -- a small trickle of incoming energy is saved up until a useable amount is stored

A solar-powered robot can be made to work, even in relatively-low light levels

Solar cell size is minimized

Note that behaviors themselves can have state, and can form representations when networked together. Thus, unlike reactive systems, behavior-based systems are not limited in their expressive and learning capabilities.

The basis behavior set of a system provides elements that are not further reducible to each other and that, when composed by sequential or concurrent execution, produce the complete behavior repertoire for the system.

Such basis behaviors are constructed, learned, or evolved from stable, robust interaction dynamics between the agent/robot and its environment, and serve as a substrate for the system's more complex behaviors.

My work generalized the notion of basis behaviors to multi-robot interactions, and demonstrated how a small set of basis behaviors per robot can be used to demonstrate a rich repertoire of individual and group-level behaviors, including following, flocking, homing, herding, aggregation, dispersion, and formations.

multi-robot learning

learning by imitation

uncertainty, non-stationarity, and real-time constraints

We assume that the slowly changing waveform at the Nv input produces a single output transition when it crosses the Nv switching threshold. This is accomplished by using a 74HC14 or similar CMOS Schmitt trigger. When 74HC04 or 74HC240s are used for Nv inverters some nasty oscillations occur during switching which makes these inverters unsuitable for most Nv networks greater than 2 Nv in series.