Page 12 - AI
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Activity 7
Vehicles that think!
We have all heard of self-driving cars and autonomous vehicles. But what about
vehicles that can think and display cognitive behaviours?
We will learn about some primitive robots, which have come to be known as
Braitenberg Vehicles after being mentioned first in Vehicles: Experiments in
Synthetic Psychology by Valentino Braitenberg. Synthetic psychology is a branch
of science where biological behaviour is synthesized instead of being analyzed.
Like humans, these vehicles can interact with their environment and stimuli, such
as sight, touch, etc. Sounds interesting?
To understand this better, let us take examples of a few vehicles as a thought
experiment. The first generation of vehicles started with only one sensor and one
motor connected with a wire. It is this combination of different wires and different
types of sensors that exhibits vehicles’ emotions.
Vehicle 1: Base Vehicle
Motion is always forward in the direction of the arrow unless some stimulus is given.
Vehicle 2a: Fear
This vehicle spends more time in places with less stimulation and speeds up when
exposed to more stimulation (say, light source?).
ArtificiAl intelligence 11
