Braitenberg Project
Valentino Braitenberg is an Italian-Austrian neuroscientist. In his book, entitled “Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology”, he performs thought experiments creating vehicles which, while simple in nature, exhibit complex behaviors such as fear, love, aggression and optimism. His vehicles are simple, with the simplest consisting of a single sensor and single motor. This simplicity makes it easy for someone to construct one of his vehicles. While Braitenberg like behaviors can be programmed into any robot with the proper sensors and actuators it is a more interesting challenge to construct a Braitenberg vehicle in hardware, as described in his thought experiments.
Due to the interesting nature of Braitenberg’s vehicles, the CMU Robotics Institute has provided funding to a project to create Braitenberg-esque vehicles that would then go on display in the Robotics Institute. I’m acting as co-project leader, coordinating with a graduate student in the Machine Learning program who obtained the funding for the project. I’m hoping the project will produce 5 to 6 artistic Braitenberg inspired creations. I’ve spent some time thinking about possible things I could create and I’m excited to see what ideas other people come up with after I present the project at the Robotics Club’s general body meeting.
More to come on Braitenberg in the coming weeks as projects get started.