Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #05370
To: "'beam@sgiblab.sgi.com'" beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: John Mitchell johnm@magnet.com
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 17:13:26 -0400
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Hoverbot & balancing acts ( was: LEGO lawnmower)
On Thu, 22 Jul 1999, Wilf Rigter wrote:
> Yes! Well at least the equivalent of a self adjusting pot. It uses very long
> time constant (hours) cascaded memory Nu's which by (intelligent) "trial and
> error" acquire a combination of high and low Nubits depending on external
> "error" conditions which are locked in when the "error" is "corrected" and
> use these Nubits to form a binary value that can be used with resistors as a
> D/A to adjust the TC of an Nv etc. ( all that in one sentence!) In some case
> just one bit, is sufficient in others 4 or 8 bits may be needed for higher
> resolution "fine tuning" a process
Another way to think of this is: robot is always changing its parameters.
If what it's doing is "bad", change them faster or by a larger amount. If
it's doing something "good", change things slower. Over time, the robot
will get better at whatever it's doing.
Check out this page:
http://www.nc5.infi.net/~wtnewton/otherwld/robot5.html
The author shows a BEAM-inspired cpu-controlled robot, which is programmed
to learn over time. He directly credits "How to Build Your Own
Self-Programming Robot" (book) by David L. Heiserman, alas out of print --
check http://www.abebooks.com/
- j
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