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The IEI Robot Screen Saver

Summary - IEI, in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate (AFRL/MNAV), builds a highly unique kind of control system for robots, a neural network architecture that can improvise new behaviors as unforeseen scenarios present themselves in the robot's environment. In other words, these 'creative' robots can transcend their cumulative programming and invent new plans of action to achieve very broadly defined objectives. In this screen saver, which we emphasize is not a pre-recorded movie, one of our less sophisticated creative control systems is governing leg servo motion in the virtual reality simulation of a complex hexapod crawler. Virtual, onboard sonar scans the robot's environment to detect viable passages through which it can crawl. Based upon such sonar inputs, IEI's patented Creativity Machine improvises the appropriate leg motion to navigate through the maze. (Important to note is that this simulation incorporates only a small fraction of IEI's advanced robotic principles, but nevertheless does provide a unique and captivating screen saver, as well as a brief educational experience on the history of IEI's highly advanced robotic AI.)

Details - Use this link, IEI Creative Robot Screen Saver, to download the setup file, botscrnsaver.exe. Upon launching this application, the installation wizard will guide you through the setup process. Thereafter, choose the "Imagination Engines Bot" from the screen saver tab of the desktop properties dialog. Once the screen saver is running, the user may toggle between successive views of the robot and the maze by pressing the 'V' key. Pressing the 'R' key will restart the simulation with another randomly selected maze.

Our favorite view of the robot is the default 'tail' view that allows the viewer to observe the details of the leg movements invented by the Creativity Machine based control system in response to periodic sonar sweeps.

For those of you who are interested in interpreting the data streaming across the left of the screen, here are some explanations:

• Position is represented as the x and y coordinates of the maze. Distances are measured in VRML units.

• Elevation is the height in VRML units of the bot's center of gravity above the maze's floor.

• Heading is the azimuth into which the robot is moving, measured in degrees from the simulation's 'north' (the upper portion of the screen as seen in the maze's global view from above).

• Balance represents the dot product of the robotic crawler's body normal with the normal to the maze's floor.

• Current Sonar shows a red to green strip representing an angular sweep through the forward view of the robot. Greener areas represent potential directions to crawl, while red indicate the presence of obstacles that would prohibit forward progress.

• Speed represents the number of VRML units covered in the crawler's last step.

• Elapsed Time is the cumulative time since the maze and crawling sequence were first initiated.

• Frustration indicates exactly that, how 'irritated' the robot is with its ability to make crawling progress. As frustration builds, the crawler gets progressively more creative in seeking alternative directions to crawl, compelling it to invent the required servo sequences to proceed in the most promising directions.

Note: This screen saver is an outgrowth of research that was partially funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate (AFRL/MNAV). The robotic design was inspired by LynxMotion's H-3 robot.

© 2008, Imagination Engines, Inc.