Braitenberg Vehicles explore Reality
Braitenberg’s Vehicles |
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In his 1984
book 'Vehicles, Experiments in Synthetic Psychology' Valentino Braitenberg
presents an armada of simple vehicles that consist only of sensors, motors,
and wiring. Despite their simplicity these vehicles show astonishingly
diverse behaviors. Braitenberg thus shows how simple neural architecture (the
wiring) can produce complex behaviors in real world environments. The image
on the right show how different wiring patterns of inhibitory connections
result in opposite behaviors. Such
simple robots are research- and demonstration-tools in the field of
Computational Neuroscience, as they illustrate principles of how animal and
human brains might work. They remind researchers that often not the system
itself, but its interaction with its environment has crucial importance for
understanding the system’s operating principles. |
Braitenberg Vehicles with 2
sensors and 2 motors each. |
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Our vehicle |
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The
best way to understanding usually is by exploration; so physically
implemented the imaginary vehicles to facilitate exploration. As in
Braitenberg’s concepts our vehicle consists of two sensors and two
actuators that can propel the vehicle. The sensors in the front of the
vehicle respond to incoming light. The motors in the vehicles back each have
an excitatory and an inhibitory input. Signals originating from the sensors
get connected via cables to any of the motor inputs. This
simple setup facilitates duplicating Braitenberg’s experiments and
allows further exploration of other connections from sensory inputs to motor
outputs. |
One of our
“Braitenberg” vehicles |
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Experiments |
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During
a week of “open house” events (link in German) at the |
High-school student
experimenting |
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Further Information |
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Project
group Jakob
Heinzle Armin
Duff Jörg
Conradt
Valentino
Braitenberg and his book Demo Movie (Excerpts
on the right) |
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