Servo - May 2015

Currently, I’ve plugged in a Gamma subroutine and have added back decrementing the confidence level which was removed in the previous iteration of code (Beta1). I’m getting some very interesting behavior from Rodney, and am trying to figure out what he’s thinking.

Working with Rodney is like the proverbial box of chocolates ... you never know what you’re going to get. Sure you’ve programmed in the code, but it’s up to Rodney how he interprets it.

The current code is available through the article link. I’d appreciate those of you interested (and especially Heiserman fans) to take a look and let me know what you think. I’m a hacker like most of you and need help.

The original Beta code worked pretty well. Junior would eventually get into the back and forth oscillating pattern, but I had left out decrementing the confidence level.

Without doing that, Gamma becomes a non-starter as little Rodney needs a way to clear out the motions which no longer work towards his goal of free movement.

Also, the Gamma subroutine needs some work as it only picks off the first motion code with a high confidence level. When confronted with a Gamma opportunity, Rodney needs to go through all the options or at least go through all of them until he gets to a successful solution. Here’s a link to Rodney running the current Gamma program: http://tinyurl.com /Rodney-gamma2.

If you look at the code, you’ll see an array called MemArray which has nine indices — 0-8 (the nine possible motion codes) and two elements (response and confidence). Some more work needs to be done probing these elements to see exactly what Rodney is thinking; which is what we’ll do in the next installment.