#robotics Logs

Mar 26 2015

02:15 rue_bed :)
02:21 niepoo is in eastern oregon - electrical devices are 0% efficient in winter... along with everything e
05:09 Vetaxili_ How can I train an agent in a simulation using ANN and GA to avoid obstacles?
05:10 deshipu there are whole papers on the subject
05:10 deshipu in general, it's Hard™
05:10 deshipu easier to just hardcode it by hand
05:10 deshipu and you get better results
05:13 Vetaxili_ deshipu: as a part of my coursework I am supposed to use adaptive method to make an agent avoid obstacles. I guess using GA alone without ANN should do - but I don't even know where to begin. So pissed off about it, we haven't even covered anything of this sort during lectures or seminars so I don't know how we are expected to complete it within the next 5 weeks :S
05:14 deshipu Vetaxili_: I suppose you should raise that issue with your lecturers
05:14 Jak_o_Shadows Start dead simple. Don't jump into the final answer
05:15 deshipu Vetaxili_: but one way to go abuout it, that I would probably choose, would be to code an obstacle-avoidance algorithm by hand, with several parameters to tweak in it
05:15 deshipu Vetaxili_: then I would use GA to tweak those parameters
05:17 deshipu for instance if you have a robot with a distance sensor in front of it
05:18 deshipu you can have an algorithm that, when the distance sensor reading is belowe certain threshold (one parameter), it engages the "go backwards and turn left" procedure. the amount by which it goes backwards and turns are another two parameters
05:19 Vetaxili_ deshipu: We were supposed to message the tutor with the idea and I said I was pretty lost in the subject. All I got back was that I could use a GA and no suggestions to any of the problems I stated. I just gave him a pretty poor review on university's module survey... Especially that I'm not the only one who thinks the same. What my brain struggles to contain is how do I select which objects are of the interest to be avoided?
05:19 deshipu then you come up with a fitness function, and run GA on that
05:20 deshipu Vetaxili_: well, asking the right questions is hard
05:20 deshipu Vetaxili_: often it takes more work to ask a good question, than to find the answer to it yourself
05:21 deshipu if you just say "I don't know what to do, hold my hand", you won't get a useful answer
05:22 Vetaxili_ If not the fact that I only have 5 weeks and the deadline is the same day as my dissertation it wouldn't be so bad. I would take more time on this but I feel as if I have no time to waste. I've got some ideas but I don't know how to put them together so I wondered if someone here already met with the subject.
05:23 deshipu yeah, you have it tough
05:23 deshipu I wouldn't want to be in your place
05:23 Vetaxili_ I will try and explain what I was thinking about and where my brain can't put things together :P
05:24 deshipu yeah, you know, your lecturer gets paid for explaining it to you
05:24 deshipu make him work for his wages
05:24 Vetaxili_ If you only knew how many times I was turned away. In the 3 years of my time at the university I only met with 3 tutors who were excellent.
05:26 Vetaxili_ Brb
05:44 deshipu how come other students dont have that problem?
05:50 Vetaxili_ I only know 2 other people who do that module. 1 is in similar situation and second one is pretty good at that stuff anyway as he did summer research etc at uni. I'm just a little creature that found Computer Science interesting to do but didn't come from college of CS or IT faculty or didn't have time or resources to have a computing hobby
05:51 Vetaxili_ I should have gone with bloody beauty course like majority of women do :S
05:57 deshipu Vetaxili_: note that confusion is a sign of learning
05:57 deshipu it's the moment when you overcome is when you actually gain meaningful skills
05:57 deshipu but that won't come without some work
05:57 deshipu Vetaxili_: so what do you think about my idea?
05:58 deshipu Vetaxili_: you could add a bunch of more parameters to it, for stuff like cooldowns and such
05:59 deshipu you also have to come with some utility function
05:59 deshipu a way to score different solutions
19:12 armyofevilrobots rue_*: Dunno if you’ll get this, but if you’re going to the coast makers thing tonight, could I trouble you for some single row female headers? I have to socket some A3988 stepper drivers and I am completely out of female headers! I need 40 pins worth. Cheers!
20:00 rue_house armyofevilrobots, ok
20:00 rue_house its at 7 right?
20:11 armyofevilrobots yep!
20:15 rue_house hmmm we been having power bumps in the day
20:18 Tom_itx just bumps?
20:19 rue_house Broadcast Message from root@zipp
20:19 rue_house (somewhere) at 12:41 ...
20:19 rue_house
20:19 rue_house Power failure on UPS zippo. Running on batteries.
20:19 rue_house
20:19 rue_house
20:19 rue_house Broadcast Message from root@zipp
20:19 rue_house (somewhere) at 12:41 ...
20:19 rue_house
20:19 rue_house Power has returned on UPS zippo...
20:23 armyofevilrobots Nothing here. It’s been solid ¯\_(ツ)_/¯