robots and neurons

It has already been point out in earlier blogs (e.g 

Developing problem-solving teaching materials based upon Microsoft Robotics Studio and Problem-solving and robots ) that robots and problem-solving are a go well together. What about advanced problem-solving techniques such as artificial intelligence, do simple lego robots go well with these as a way of developing student's skills?

In my opinion it is a yes. As a part of a set of tools I have found them very useful for teaching the principles of simple neurones.

 Example code:

import josx.platform.rcx.*;

public class annlf{

 public static void main(String[] args)

 {

  int w[][] ={//put weights here};

  int o[]={1,1};

  int s1,s2,res1,res2;

  int sensor1=0,sensor2=0;

  robot_1 tom=new robot_1();

  Sensor.S1.activate();

  Sensor.S3.activate();

  for(;;){

   sensor1=Sensor.S1.readValue();

   sensor2=Sensor.S3.readValue();

   LCD.showNumber(sensor1);

   if (sensor1<42)

    s1=1;

   else

    s1=0;

   if (sensor2<42)

    s2=1;

   else

    s2=0;

   res1=w[0][1]*s1+w[0][2]*s2+w[0][0];

   if (res1>=0)

    o[0]=1;

   else

    o[0]=0;

   res2=w[1][1]*s1+w[1][2]*s2+w[1][0];

   if (res2>=0)

    o[1]=1;

   else

    o[1]=0;

   if ((o[0]==1)&&(o[1]==1))

    tom.forward1(10);

   if ((o[0]==0)&&(o[1]==0))

    tom.backward1(20);

   if ((o[0]==1)&&(o[1]==0))

    tom.tlturn(20);

   if ((o[0]==0)&&(o[1]==1))

    tom.trturn(20);

   LCD.refresh();

  }

 }

}

The example code uses two neurones to produce a line follower. The nice thing about this though is it easy to adapted this for a single neuron or multiple neuron tasks. For more on this some examples can be found here.

Work within the School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton was presented at a recent workshop,  Robotics Workshop: Bot Shop! 28th October 2011 at the University of Derby.

The work presented discussed using Lego Robots to support the learning of Neural Networks on an artificial intelligence module.The aim being to use the advantages of using robots, their visual and physical nature, as a way of making the slightly abstract nature of the neurons and multi-layer perceptrons more concrete by examples.

For more details on the Workshop go to: http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/events/displayevent.php?id=260

The above approaches used the Mindstorms RCX robots but it can equally be done with the newer NXT robots.