Thought of you when I read this article with your preference to know what the code is doing.

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-physics-based-self-learning-machines-current-artificial.html

   I understand you had a particular aim of building an AI controlled robot, and considering the name of the website, your aspirations are presumably rather similar to those of Bill's, at least in the site's early days. How realistic that aim is, remains for me, an interesting question. I am certain it is not a trivial aim.

Of course, assuming your robot is self-contained and mobile, navigation is a prime issue to deal with. Simple tasks like a vacuum cleaner can be achieved with relatively simple algorithms without invoking AI, but applying AI as an alternative approach is still valuable, because assuming it is successful, then it may indicate a means of expanding into a further 'skill' which may less amenable to traditional programming.

I have always been somewhat eclectic in my aims and interests, which has often resulted in me not really knowing which avenue to explore next. However, that interest overlaps with many of the electronic and software parts, both of which are constant areas of discussion here. Plus there are unexpected inputs, such as from @Inq and others, one result of which resulted in me starting to play with a cheap 3D printer ... something that was off my radar until a year or two ago. Hence, I find this forum an interesting place to be.

I confess I have forgotten about answering a question on a wheel encoder .. I hope my answer was helpful to you and apologies if it wasn't. Of course, some questions are difficult to answer in a positive manner.

So at present, I have so many things I want to have a look at, I know I will never have the time to do more than scratch the surface. If you or anyone else seems to offering an interesting insight into AI and robotics, I'll almost certainly look at it. Whether I will comment or contribute depends on whether I think my contribution will be worthwhile. I try to avoid sycophantic, or other 'false', 'low value' responses, and whilst I may get something entirely wrong, it will be an unintentional error. But, if something is too far out of my experience and understanding, I may stay mute in deference to those who can make a positive contribution.

Best wishes and good health, Dave

@inq 

Your position on your limits of helping/giving code is well known here and doesn't surprise me by being explicitly stated now.

Yes I am rather limited and in the past have had my hobby greatly enhanced from programming experts on various forums.  Fortunately there are expert programmers on the programming forums that sometimes help lesser skilled hobby programmers or beginners. Indeed the internet has a wealth of information making it so much easier for anyone to learn anything they want!

Not sure what the future of programs like chatGPT will be with regards being a useful means to learn new things and help with questions. My gut feeling is it will always be limited to the garbage in garbage out problem and thus not always be reliable, particularly if real expert humans don't place their know how, art works, music and code on the internet for these systems to steal and rearrange and regurgitate in response to text input.

I will probably occasionally check this forum in case something interesting comes up but at this stage I see nothing I can use or can help others with anymore.

@davee 

With AI (for example), I am not currently working on it,

Like I wrote my initial interest here was in response to Bill's intention at the time to build a "real" robot which would have involved some AI and I hoped to glean useful information mainly on the hardware side.  I was looking for information to interface motors and sensors to the Arduino and RPi and his videos provided such information.

I see from your first post that "Science, including electronics, has been a major part of my life, and now I am retired I am enjoying the opportunity to look at things I didn't have time for in the past."

A glanced at some of your posts and I recall your input to my problem of getting an accurate read from the wheel encoders.

I didn't know that.  I thought @thrandell was using code from a book.

I don't remember reading that in his thread.  I just know the sited paper doesn't have any real meat in it.  I remember asking if he had an additional reference for that paper, but he didn't respond to that.  But, @thrandell commented Goldberg and the paper referenced Goldberg and it did use a lot of the same terminology.  That is why I got the book and it does have the engine code in Pascal.  That is back when I found the C++ version and posted that in his thread... or maybe in your other thread?... Anyway... somewhere.  

@robotbuilder asked him for his code. Possibly crossing that line.

That never occurred to me.  I assumed he was just duplicating the code in the book.

Obviously, I can't speak for him.  I'm sure he doesn't hang on our every word and might of missed those posts (yours and my requests).  But, I appreciate what he does share with us; and I also don't blame him one bit if he is working toward some marketable (or even self-education) end-goal.  There are way too many unscrupulous people that will gladly take his work and sell / palm-it-off as their own original work.  Again... practical / useful AI and the people that can write it are in astronomical demand.  

As for anyone being interested in anything I write all I can say is without feedback you may as well be talking to your hand or to yourself so there is no point in it.

Your position on your limits of helping/giving code is well known here and doesn't surprise me by being explicitly stated now.  

RE: It was interesting to watch the system iterate itself to a working set of weights.

As for anyone being interested in anything I write all I can say is without feedback you may as well be talking to your hand or to yourself so there is no point in it. 

When someone, like yourself or @inq, does something original or out of the usual, then for me, there can be two or more levels that I may be interested.

With AI (for example), I am not currently working on it, so the minutiae of a long programme listing is unlikely to be that interesting, but I may be interested in the general scheme of how it works and what it achieves. I try to gradually build up a picture of what is possible and the underlying technology, even if I am not presently involved in it.

However, at some point in time, then I may be interested in some involvement .. at which point, access to software code, etc. will be a lot more valuable and interesting.

So apologies if I have not provided sufficient or appropriate feedback, but that is not neccesarily a reliable indicator of the value of your contribution. Please appreciate that although we live in world that can communicate anywhere in a fraction of a second, it may be days, weeks, months or years between somone authoring something and someone else appreciating the value of it.

Best wishes and take care, Dave

@inq 

Even the paper @thrandell topic uses as a reference, all the concepts are abstract and no written code is offered.

I didn't know that.  I thought @thrandell was using code from a book.

@robotbuilder asked him for his code. Possibly crossing that line.

That never occurred to me.  I assumed he was just duplicating the code in the book. I have had an interest in AI most of my life and am able to draw on that knowledge to write my own AI including my own version of a GA program. It was interesting to watch the system iterate itself to a working set of weights.

As for anyone being interested in anything I write all I can say is without feedback you may as well be talking to your hand or to yourself so there is no point in it. 

Back in the 1970's when I wrote my own Pong on an Apple II, I thought that such a trivial game couldn't be marketable.

Although I never play computer games myself I found writing my own version of simple games (Pong was one of the first on the TRS80) was a good way to have fun learning to program. I didn't copy code just the behaviors with my own code and I drew my own graphics as I sort of like doing art. The hard part of writing a computer game is actually coming up with the idea and game play something I wasn't able to do.

I see many on the Internet discussing it, teaching the basics and in its most basic forms, the concepts are really quite easy and can even be run on any modern Mac/Windows machine up to a certain complexity level.  Heck... for a simple obstacle avoidance robot, it can actually be run on the MPU.  It really doesn't get more complex (programming wise) with more complex problems, it simply takes more time or the more raw horse-power that we've come to hear for things like ChatGPT, et al.  

Some people here confuse lack of forthcoming information with lack of knowledge or lack of interest.  I would suggest that is falls under the category of, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."  With the Google's of the world offering $900K/year salaries for AI engineering expertise... yes, there is one hell of a market.  Even the paper @thrandell topic uses as a reference, all the concepts are abstract and no written code is offered.  They're keeping it close to the vest even though, I would say their work is far less complicated than say a robovac. 

Maybe, @thrandell has some overall grand plan with his swarm robots that is quite marketable.  I don't blame him one-bit for keeping it close to the vest.  It would be severely tragic for him to do all the work and research, display it here and for some un-ethical visitor to this forum to take his work and put it into production.  I asked him where he saw his swarm robots going.  I probably crossed that proprietary line.  @robotbuilder asked him for his code.  Possibly crossing that line.  

For those same reasons, in my instance... I will offer up my source code for my version of the AI obstacle avoidance robot, InqEgg.  Considering I can write it with what I already know, I don't think it is beyond anyone here's ability to research/learn the techniques within say... a week or two.  That's all the time I have under my belt mixed with other life's duties.  But when I start getting into upgrading it with the house/building mapping type capability, I'm unlikely to do anything more than use abstract wording.  I simply see way too much of a market for such a bot and for my expertise (at that future point) for that capability.  

Back in the 1970's when I wrote my own Pong on an Apple II, I thought that such a trivial game couldn't be marketable.  Boy! was my engineering mentality wrong!!!  This is another Pong moment.  Any software capable youth looking for a future needs to get on the band-wagon pronto quick!  Even at my old-geezer age, I'm seeing opportunity even though, I'm not needing a paycheck.

  sorry, a badly timed keyboard click!.. message now added above