Re: Techno Games

["David Paterson (Pixi)" <david.paterson@xxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 6 Mar 2001 09:36:30 +0100, you wrote:

>I watched it last night, to be honest I was disappointed I expected
that=20
>the robots would NOT be remote controlled (certainly for the races)
ie=20
>they would 'sense' their surroundings.... I mean how difficult is it
to=20
>take a remote controlled car and turn it into  a robot (all be it
with=20
>legs)...

I thought there might be a bit more "autonomy" too, but it's a
lot
harder than you might think to really put any intelligence into stuff
like this.  I was involved in a micromouse team many years ago (the one
part of the contest that does show some real AI) and there are a lot of
very hard problems to solve.

Even in computer games or simulations, where you can have complete
knowledge of the environment, perfect sensors, perfect physics etc.,
it's still very hard to get effective AI that is worth playing against.

Something like a bicycle riding system would take a lot of development
and research, and most of the teams are very amateur school or similar
groups - some of them have done amazingly well with what they've
produced.

I think it bodes well for the future that there are so many young people
interested in trying stuff like this.  Even if it's not cutting edge,
they're learning and developing their skills, which can only be good for
the country - and some of them might even go on to develop some neat HA
gear for us :-)

DP


--=20
David_Paterson =3D david.paterson@xxxxxxx =A6 david.paterson@vissci.=
com;

R & D programmer        There are three kinds of people in the world -
Visual Sciences Ltd.      those who can count, and those who can't...

=20

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