What use would a boe-bot have solving mazes in business?

MunifTheGreat

I finished my program.
My boe-bot is able to solve mazes using right-hand rule.

I'm continuously thinking about how useful this would be in the business world even though I'm not planning to invest in it...

LoopyByteloose

Try following a lawyer through an explanation of what he considers a billable hour. If you can program a robot to do it, you will have a killer application that will make you a very rich man.

The business world is full of mazes. But I suspect that learning to search by the right-hand rule is just the first step. And everyone here knows that when it comes to microcontrollers, " A journey of a 1000 light years starts with that first step".

Welcome. I guess you want us to teach you how to get rich withing the next year or so.

Mike Green

There are a variety of maze-solving algorithms of which the right-hand rule is one of the simplest. Printed circuit layout is a process similar to maze solving. Generating optimal computer code in a compiler is also related to maze solving. Various other optimization processes are also related.

SRLM

A maze can be represented by a graph, and the right hand rule is just one possible algorithm. And graphs have lot's of applications.

Heater.

What happens if the maze has "islands" or "loops"? I think you will find the right hand rule will fail in those cases. Your riches may come when you have tackled that.

LoopyByteloose

@ Heater
Are you fishing for discussion of the 7 bridge puzzle, or how many colors is needed to color any map?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_K

Heater.

Loopy,

I think the internet is another very interesting kind of maze.

Oh yes. You wouldn't happen to know the way out of here would you?

NWCCTV

You wouldn't happen to know the way out of here would you?

Ask Al Gore!!!

LoopyByteloose

cntl-alt-del

Or, are you showing me the door?

erco

Loopy Byteloose wrote: »

Are you fishing for discussion of the 7 bridge puzzle,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_K

LoopyByteloose

Are you think of the Snakes and Ladders game?

Or is this how to get to Carnegie Hall?

Try creating a routing program for London taxicab drivers. I guess Google maps can do that.

MunifTheGreat

Mike Green wrote: »

There are a variety of maze-solving algorithms of which the right-hand rule is one of the simplest. Printed circuit layout is a process similar to maze solving. Generating optimal computer code in a compiler is also related to maze solving. Various other optimization processes are also related.

You can consider me as "newbie" in boe-bot programming. I have been introduced to basic stamps and boe-bot this year. I don't think I have the necessary knowledge to be able to program like the other maze algorithms.

LoopyByteloose

Wikipedia is your friend, and there are other web sites that explore these things. Make new friends and have fun with them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_solving_algorithm

MunifTheGreat

I'm thinking of also something. Would it be useful to have such technology in lets say transfer or delivery of packages in a certain business?
like in this video.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50138922n
but in a much simpler way where the transfer would be done in a closed path, where there is one exit.
- I can program to regulate which way will be blocked, so my right-hand rule could work.

Is there any flaws in this?

Mike Green

You asked about solving mazes in business and I took your question as ... How is maze solving useful more broadly? The right-hand rule is a simple algorithm, easy to teach, easy to program for beginners, and useful enough to apply to a "real-world" problem which you've done. Other, more complex problems related to maze solving are, of course, more complicated and harder to solve and may use different algorithms, but what you've learned you can use to understand some of these other techniques and how they might be implemented. For most of them, the BoeBot is too limited in memory, code space, and speed. There are techniques in memory management and data representation (lists, queues, stacks, etc.) that you can learn and use. There are community college courses and books on the market that will teach you these and you can apply them to larger microcontrollers like the Propeller. Have fun and continue learning.

You ask about package delivery and the right-hand rule. The question really comes down to how complex the problem is. How many stops are involved? What are the costs associated with each path and how do they interrelate? A simple algorithm like the right-hand rule works pretty well when the maze is simple and the costs are straightforward. When things get more complex, the algorithm fails, not that it doesn't eventually find a path, but the path is not optimal, sometimes by a lot. For example, for package delivery, you have to meet a delivery time schedule. You have to minimize distance travelled and the cost of fuel. As the number of stops increase, the problem becomes more and more difficult to solve using a simple algorithm and the time to solution becomes prohibitive.

MunifTheGreat

Mike Green wrote: »

You asked about solving mazes in business and I took your question as ... How is maze solving useful more broadly? The right-hand rule is a simple algorithm, easy to teach, easy to program for beginners, and useful enough to apply to a "real-world" problem which you've done. Other, more complex problems related to maze solving are, of course, more complicated and harder to solve and may use different algorithms, but what you've learned you can use to understand some of these other techniques and how they might be implemented. For most of them, the BoeBot is too limited in memory, code space, and speed. There are techniques in memory management and data representation (lists, queues, stacks, etc.) that you can learn and use. There are community college courses and books on the market that will teach you these and you can apply them to larger microcontrollers like the Propeller. Have fun and continue learning.

You ask about package delivery and the right-hand rule. The question really comes down to how complex the problem is. How many stops are involved? What are the costs associated with each path and how do they interrelate? A simple algorithm like the right-hand rule works pretty well when the maze is simple and the costs are straightforward. When things get more complex, the algorithm fails, not that it doesn't eventually find a path, but the path is not optimal, sometimes by a lot. For example, for package delivery, you have to meet a delivery time schedule. You have to minimize distance travelled and the cost of fuel. As the number of stops increase, the problem becomes more and more difficult to solve using a simple algorithm and the time to solution becomes prohibitive.

Thank you!

Heater.

MunifTheGreat,

Don't get us wrong. Or me anyway. I think what you have doen is great. You have taken a first step on a very long road. And most of the human race don't even get to do that.

Thing is, these things have been studied ever since we had computers and even before. Let's call it a hundred years. The result is that we have tiny little navigator computers than can give us directions in our cars across whole coutries or even the entire planet.

Even so there are problems related to mazes, (or graphs or networks as they might say now adays) that are not solved in any satisfactory way.

And, as someone pointed out here, solving problems related to graphs/networks turns out to be very useful in solving other problems that you would think are totally unrelated.

So, don't give up. If you can program the right-hand rule into a robot and make it work it sounds like you are quite ready to tackle the next steps.

skylight

Loopy Byteloose wrote: »

Try creating a routing program for London taxicab drivers.

They wouldn't be interested unless it worked out the longest most indirect way of getting from A to B

Regarding the maze, there's been research using ant colonies to solve problems like the travelling salesman problem which have created new algorithms for solving the problems of routing faster

RDL2004

UPS trucks don’t turn left.
Well, sometimes.

UPS figures out the Right Way

LoopyByteloose

I suspect that UPS trucks don't turn right in the U.K. and Japan... due to the problems of traffic delays. The right hand rule is arbitary, a consistend left hand rule would work at well.