| |
To the list: this morning is a break for me, so I'm going to use it to
type this out. Hope no one minds that it gets sent to the "annoying
journalist" as well.
Here at Duke, we are teaching a class with the mindstorms. Recently, we
completed a class assignment where we used reinforcement learning to
teach the robots to push a trailer. This is more difficult than it
sounds, because all we tell the robot is that the jacknifed position is
bad. It is never told (explicitly) that the straight-forward position is
good, or that when the robot is slightly off center it should turn in one
direction or the other. Instead, by a program of trial-and-errror, it
learns which situations have the lowest probability of jacknifing and
goes to them. We never tell it to go straight forward, or that straight
is better than to the side. It also learns to back out when jackknifed.
For those of you more technical types, the method used is called
Q-learning and I'd be happy to detail it or show code later. Pics
(mostly large, sorry) are here:
http://arthurdent.dorm.duke.edu/legos/archives/QL/
There is also a movie ofa robot in a jacknifed position backing out into
a straight position, to give you an idea of what the behavior looks like.
Unfortunately, you'll also notice that it is a huge calculation, taking
nearly 10 seconds per move. The next generation will do several things to
speed this up and improve the learning process.
Anyway, I hope that interests someone :)
-Luis
On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Christoph Droesser wrote:
> Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 13:39:35 GMT
> From: Christoph Droesser <lego-robotics@crynwr.com>
> To: lugnet.robotics@lugnet.com
> Subject: Annoying Journalist's Request
>
> Hi,
>
> sorry for interferring with this mailing list. I am a journalist from
> Germany, working for "Konr@d", a multimedia offspring of "Stern"
> magazine. Since the Mindstorms product has just been released in
> Germany, we thought it would be a nice idea to show what else can be
> done with these bricks by people who like a little programming.
>
> So yes: I'll read all the FAQs and online manuals. The purpose of this
> mail is to find people who have built nice things. If you think your
> stuff might be interesting to be shown and written about, just drop me a
> note describing your project, a photo would be nice, too (doesn't have
> to be professional quality).
>
> Thanks
> Christoph.
>
>
> --
> ----------------------
> Christoph Droesser
> droesser@nikocity.de
> ----------------------
> Fon +49-40-4801059
> Fax +49-40-4603411
> Mobile +49-172-6072379
> ----------------------
>
>
#######################################################################
Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand.
-Anonymous
#######################################################################
|
|
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Annoying Journalist's Request
|
| Hi, sorry for interferring with this mailing list. I am a journalist from Germany, working for "Konr@d", a multimedia offspring of "Stern" magazine. Since the Mindstorms product has just been released in Germany, we thought it would be a nice idea (...) (25 years ago, 18-Oct-99, to lugnet.robotics)
|
2 Messages in This Thread:
 
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
