I wish to build a Neurobot or Brain Based Device (BBD)

MovieMaker

One of my goals from the beginning is to build a sort of poor man's BBD or Neurobot. Most of the units out there are relying on Beowulf technologies. But, I am not giving up. If any of you have experience or know something about the subject, I am a noobie in this new field. I always knew what I wanted, but I did not know what it was called.

Thanks

Leon

Have you looked at artificial neural nets (ANNs)? I've worked with them in the past.

Leon

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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
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MovieMaker

I have read about ANNs but I do not know where to start with them. OH, I also want to say that I am no Rocket Scientist. I may be of average intelligence at best.

Thanks for the Reply.

Post Edited (MovieMaker) : 6/20/2009 7:38:14 PM GMT

CounterRotatingProps

MM, this is a huge subject --- and the reference books range from bad to just slightly bad (IMHO, of course).

The first thing you should consider is advancing your IQ to sub-rocket-scientist, or invest heavily in medications, before you begin. [noparse]:)[/noparse]

Beowolf clusters are going to fade out, I think, because of the rise in power and the extreme reduction in costs of using GPU's (Graphics Processing Units). You might want to consider looking into the Nvidia cards built on their very powerful GPU's. Look for the ones that support the CUDA development platform. The one I've got in this machine can support 12,000 simultaneous threads - and barely break out into a sweat. Other Linux distributions to consider are "Pelican" (formerly Parallel Knoppix) and Quantian (aslo a Knoppix/Debian derivative, if I recall correctly.)

I guess it's obvious that you'd like to try some of these techniques on an MC, not a PC, so your options will be limited. Sophisticated neural nets require serious memory management and multi-processes. (Thus the clusters.)

That said, there is an interesting alternative to consider, if you need neural net-like control abilities, without the overhead: fuzzy logic, and generally, PID controllers (Proportional–Integral–Derivative). If you do Propellers, you might want to take a look at Viewport. Hanno Sander wrote this, and has cool sample code for landing on the moon using fuzzy logic. That PID brain is better than my protein brain for landing!

- Howard

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waltc

The field ain't what it used to be. Years back you could buy NN chips from Intel and Fuzzy Logic chips from ST and there used to be FL and NN C code generators.

That said, if you are serious these books are a place to start:

Neural and Fuzzy Logic Control of Drives and Power Systems by Cirstea, MN, A Dinu, JG Khor, and M McCormick. Warning it runs about $70.00 used and they use FPGA's for their Neural-Fuzzy chips.

The Fuzzy Systems Handbook(With C++ code examples) by Cox. You can find it used cheap and is a good intro/tutorial on FL.

GWJax

Moviemaker look in your e-mail for a surprise.

Jax

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If a robot has a screw then it must be romoved and hacked into..

LilDi

GWJax, Could it be that others might be interested in the surprise? Thats what forums are for. Sharing of information.

GWJax

LilDi said...
GWJax, Could it be that others might be interested in the surprise? Thats what forums are for. Sharing of information.

Sorry not this one.. This was only for MovieMaker. I'll see if I can come up with something else..

Jax

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If a robot has a screw then it must be romoved and hacked into..

Humanoido

If you are interested in tiny AI programs that can become
self aware, and self deterministic, complete with a short
term or long term memory, and some purpose in life, then
keep an eye out for SEED, the details are posted in the
Project Forum and periodically updated, link below. In its
entirety, it will fit into the smallest amount of EEPROM code.
It has a tentative 7 Phase code with the 2nd currently in
progress. Part of SEED is Minscule AI - an interpreter
that was developed for my Basic Stamps and Toddler
Humanoid.

humanoido

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Otter

A neurobot. Interesting.

The best metaphor I can think of in wetware would be a ganglion... not an actual brain (in such a small machine). People have already mapped the entire neural circuits of simpler worms and snail type things. What they discovered was that a lot of processing happens 'on the way' to the brain. There are all sorts of reflex, feedback, filtering and decision making calculations that go on way before any stimulus gets sent to the CNS.

So, with neural network source code being readily available on the web, it's not a stretch to make a little ganglion. And here's the thing... higher order behaviors can arise from lots of little stupid decisions-- even reflex. That is entertainment. And that, after all, is why we do these things. Right?

And by the way, humanoido... I can't believe you made a Basic Stamp supercomputer. You're nuts!

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CounterRotatingProps

> And here's the thing... higher order behaviors can arise from lots of little stupid decisions-- even reflex

yes, this is interesting - a fly's eyes for example are tightly coupled to its leg and wing muscles. And they nearly always jump backwards in take off (so now you know how to nail them without a fly swatter [noparse]:)[/noparse]

Otter, it would be fun to have your 'ganglion gadget' hooked to a sensor and some muscle wire ...

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MovieMaker

Thanks Guys for the advice.