BubbleBoy’s behaviour is primarily focused on food and water. BubbleBoy lives its anthropomorphized life just be be fed/watered! This means that BubbleBoy will want to know when it will expect to be fed, so that way it can headbob at the most optimal times. Being fed/watered is having a button pressed on BubbleBoy’s green stage area (the part with the blue and white LCD).

BubbleBoy will have three sensors, and a rudimentary measure time. The three sensors are the LDR, lid switch, and Xbee. All of these are onboard the robot (except for the Xbee which isn’t implemented yet).

Here’s a broad flowchart of the behaviour, which I will then explain below in detail.

1. Creating the Expectation

This is the observatory phase. BubbleBoy initially does not have any expectation of when to be fed, so it waits around. While it is waiting, its collecting data from all of the sensors and storing them to an array. There has to be 10 numbers in the array for each sensor before BubbleBoy can proceed to the next stage, pattern finding. Once this is fulfilled, and if BubbleBoy is fed/watered, then it goes on to find a pattern.

2. Pattern Finding

BubbleBoy is seen as a simple robot. Thereby, its pattern finding is relatively simple as well. The main idea is to check each sensor’s array and see if there is a pattern within the residuals. Meaning, if looking for a sequential pattern, the array would be iterated through (starting at i=0, stopping after i=8), and i+1 would be subtracted from i. An average of the residual change would be calculated at the same time. The array would be iterated through again, this time to count how many items are within +- 10% of the residual average. If the count is above 7, then it is said that there is a sequential pattern in there.

The same process is done for a secondary pattern, and a ‘thirdary’ pattern. Meaning, every 2nd number and 3rd number is checked to see if there is a pattern. It also goes through and checks with offsets, just incase the pattern is “even/odd/whatever”.

If there are no patterns, a random primary sensor is chosen for BubbleBoy to work with.

A problem exists in determining which pattern for which sensor to trust the most. A thirdary pattern for a photosensor is less dependable than a sequential pattern for a lid switch. This is handled in the next step.

3. Determining the Sensor to Use

The sensor with whatever pattern to follow is chosen through a Bayes Filter. This allows for a simple specification of confidence levels for a given sense resulting in a particular state through a table where all rows add up to 1.0. The sense columns are the sensor and pattern type. Meaning, there’s three sensors for every sensor, giving 9 senses in total. The states are confidence intervals. Anything >= 85 would be considered the most confident.



The numbers in bold are the ones that are more probable to be a result. A sensor in particular to look at is the Xbee for a thirdary pattern. The numbers are dispersed in such a way that it is almost a bimodal distribution. In order to understand why this is, imagine the scenario in real:

Xbee modems can communicate for up to a few meters. If BubbleBoy only receives a message every 3rd instance, it could either be a clever pattern, or it could be a miscommunication.

For this reason, the largest probability is given to the least confident state, and the second largest probability is given to the most confident state. It depends on the Bayes Filter and random roulette for what will actually be chosen.

This is just for determining what sensor is the most confident, that will provide the best result. This can mean that the chosen sensor will be followed, but it also may not. This will be explained in the next step.

4. Calculating the Cost Adjustment

The adjusted cost is determined by using the result from the previous step, and multiplying the probability by the inverse of whatever column it was situated in. In simpler terms, if the result was found in the best confidence interval state, then it would be multiplied by 5. If it was in ( 85, 70 ], it would be multiplied by 4…

This is then used as the sense for the next Bayes Filter. The state is how much of a cost to reduce the sense by.



Once the cost adjustment amount is determined, it is then subtracted from the cost of the particular sense’s cell. All of the senses are in a grid, with the most “primary” being the closest to BubbleBoy. An A* search is then used to choose the closest and least cost sensor. Once this is done, BubbleBoy can get on to entertaining its audience while waiting for food/water!

5. Following the Expectation

This is the main loop of the program. It’s where BubbleBoy is thinking in the present time about if it will be fed or not!

The key idea here is that BubbleBoy is thinking in the now. Meaning, it tracks the patterns differently than it does when it is reflecting back on them (in a “past” thought).

Sensor data is retrieved and placed into an array of size 10. The data at i is checked wither it is within +- 10% of the average in the pattern. The threshold percentage amount differs for the type of pattern, where secondary would be +- 20%, and thirdary would be +- 30%. If the data fits in to the check, then a “yes” counter is incremented.

Once the “yes” counter is >= 6, the food level will begin to decrease by (i/2)^2. At the same time, BubbleBoy will begin to show signs that he is excited to be fed/watered soon, by spinning its hat and bobbing its head.

If the “no” counter is >= 6, then it means that the expectation isn’t really working in the present thought. A flag is set to redo the expectation once BubbleBoy receives food and water.

i is then either incremented or reset to 0, depending if it hit 9 or not. (That’s a sort of obvious step)

6. Real-World Behaviors

When the time elapsed from not receiving food exceeds 150% of that of the observed elapsed time, BubbleBoy goes in to a “wallow” mode. When BubbleBoy is wallowing, it spins its hat slowly, and bobs rarely.

If the time elapsed is ( 150%, 100% ], BubbleBoy is “angry” because it did not receive its food exactly before the time elapsed. The hat will not spin, and BubbleBoy will bob side to side, and once (quickly) in the opposite axis to simulate a sort of “twitching” to all this anger!

If the time elapsed is ( 100%, 85% ], BubbleBoy is eager to please. Hat tricks will be common, same as delightful bobbing. Depending on how much food/water BubbleBoy has, it may also hoola hoop!

7. Last part of Following the Expectation

Depending on when BubbleBoy was fed, if it was in ( whatever, 100 ], the expectation will be done. Essentially, BubbleBoy is a positive/eager thinker that believes it should always be fed before the elapsed observed time. What an attitude!

If it is in [ 85, 100 ), then the expectation will be kept.

To reformulate the expectation, the previous steps are executed on the collected data. Then, everything repeats!

What will be super interesting to see, in my opinion, will be when the discrepancies occur from past thought to present thought. It will be interesting to see which sensors fare better through that transformation.

It will also be interesting to see if this actually can work on an Arduino, and not in simulation. I created a simulated version of BubbleBoy in Processing earlier in the week.

I’ll do the initial coding and testing through this simulation, mainly because I already coded the Bayes Filter Algorithm (with random roulette) in Processing from 2009 Honors Summer Research. Plus, in Processing it is very simple to communicate to an Arduino through Firmata. I can read in the data from BubbleBoy through there.

Hopefully next Friday I will have devised a test sequence to test the soon-to-be-coded AI on. This will of course be Open Source, under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (BY-NC-SA).

Let me know what you think of this AI in the comment section below! (And yes I know it is very linear, but BubbleBoy doesn’t have enough DOF in the real world to spend the effort making the AI more nonlinear, since the observed result will essentially be the same!)

Yay!!!!

It is also on youtube.

The “squeaking” that you hear was one of the servos pulsating, most likely due to a short. I unplugged it later, and it stopped. ^_^

The program evaluates the light the same way MANOI’s hockey stick did. Once it goes over a particular threshold, it will begin to spin its hat and start saying “HELLO!HELLO!HELLO!”.

At first, I wanted to make BB react to sound, so I dismantled a “haut-parleur” that I got a while ago, thinking that it was a piezo speaker. It’s actually not a piezo, because when I was looking at the analog readings on the Arduino, nothing happened if I fiddled with it. Weird!

When it says on the LCD that I’m at “cheel”, it is hardcoded in. I tried to use the script that downloads a feed, but it doesn’t work for me, for some reason. I commented below that post with my setup and questions. =)

Aah I can’t wait until my Femsapien arrives from the EPFL! It is super boring without a humanoid to work on.

I’m not exactly sure what the moral of this FNR is supposed to be… annoy me and face ‘teh ultimate’ BubbleBoy?! Hahahaha

I’ll add the video later in another post, Vimeo has a wait time of 130 minutes – and YouTube … well who knows about YouTube. o.O

I’m going to be working on an AI Library for Processing with a few people here at the COSI (hopefully). Expect many more posts about that! Woohuu! =)

That’s all for now. *turns lamp off*

I started a new project thingy where it is an extremely simple game of pong. The paddles are stationary, but the trick is that one paddle would be controlled by the computer (in this case- an Arduino), and the other would be controlled by the human with a Wii Nunchuck.

The paddles are represented by tiny pink LEDs, and the ball is represented by the LEDs in between them.

There is one LED at the top that is used to signal the start of a new game, and/or a goal.

Since the human player would be using a nunchuck, it would sort of be like Dance-Dance-Revolution where you would have to tilt it a particular way to have the paddle show up. For this, I’m going to use BubbleBoy’s LCD screen:

It will also be able to display the score! ^_^

I got a little bored of doing this due to numerous conflicting errors when I compiled the code, so I switched to my snowplow robot.

I remember having trouble trying to get the two motors to move with this one, so my main goal was to debug it. It turns out that one of the tab thingys on the DC motor was loose!

I had to snap the robot in half in order to transport it, so now the snowplow is waaay too top heavy =) It’s kind of funny!

I really can’t wait to get my Femsapien that I won from the Robots Podcast contest. I’ll play around with it a bit, then I will hack it and put an Arduino in it! One of the things I really want to do is to try making it Twitter. Since I don’t have an ethernet shield, I would probably have the robot (Arduino) send a variable to Processing, which would then twitter, probably using something like this.

BubbleBoy did not win, nor PLACE in crabfu’s ‘Most Characterful’ competition.

I don’t understand how it didn’t…
My source and schematics are even open!!

This extremely sucks as I wanted to win so badly as I don’t have the money to buy a serial servo controller Fudge!!
Will MANOI forever be in a box? Talk about unethical treatment to a robot…
(You wouldn’t keep a cat in a box* for a month would you?! why would a robot be any different?!)
* Schrodinger’s cat is an exception

I guess I poured too much creativity and florescent pink and lime green paint into it >:( Grr! Either that, or it doesn’t even count as a robot since it doesn’t show its wires.

Although it is only “one contest” it was only an EXTREMELY GIGANTICOR SUPER DUPER CONTEST that I really wanted to win so I can work on my other robot so I can win other contests so I can pay for parts to keep researching robotics!!!!

sigh…

And here’s the circuit diagram!

I hope I entered crabfu’s most characterful robot contest correctly. The deadline said: 09/08/08 at midnight — but it almost sounds as if it’s already closed and so now I’m so worried that I didn’t even enter and I won’t even be considered so therefore I wouldn’t stand a chance :’( I HATE TIMEZONES!!! Let’s just all hope that it is entered in the contest…
Update: Everything is okay. I’m entered in the contest!

The source code is here! There are no comments in the code yet (they’re all in my brain at the moment, haha).

Although I said (on Wednesday) that this was going to be posted tomorrow… it’s actually early Friday. BUT, since I haven’t slept yet, it’s still Thursday to me :] I had so much trouble getting the footage from the tape recorder onto the mac! It seemed to be like technical difficulty after technical difficulty the entire time. I’ll post more details tomorrow about the schematics… to be honest I forgot if I used pull up resistors or not! So I have to check…

All the awesome pictures! The plastic was painted green, and the push buttons were created

There’s BubbleBoy!

The future versions will employ ‘expectations’. For instance, when BB is fed, it will record the LDR value. If after three action sets and the LDR value is the same… it will expect to be fed! If it’s not fed, then it will become more hungry or thirsty since it was somewhat ‘disappointed’ because it wasn’t fed.

Schematics and fancy vocabularized blurb tomorrow

I might even write a fancy shmancy few paragraphs about how scientific it is.

BubbleBoy is doing good- and looks EXACTLY like a pink snowman with the scarf, which is what I was aiming for.

The coding is going good… it’s all really simple Check out this video of cycling the health levels. For health >= 90 there is an action, but the others there isn’t yet because I haven’t programmed it yet teeheehee.

The video is really slow… as the delay between cycles was 10 seconds xD At the end you’ll see BubbleBoy’s ‘behaviour’ for health >= 90.