expanding with Lego Mindstorms Set?

[aspera]

Ok, here's one for you, can Hal talk to other programs? like using some sort of plugin?

here's the idea: we make a arm or something else with a lego mindstorm kit and have Hal control it.

anybody know if this might be even remotly possible? if not, maybe Zabaware could find a way to add it in 5.0.

Mindstorm sets can do some amazing things, move around, react to light, motion, they have a camera you can add to them, people have made ones that drive around, move arms, pick up cans, play games.

There must be a way to get Hal to talk to the Lego software/Control Box.

Imagine building a robot out of lego's on wheels, with two arms, and putting a laptop on it running Hal, add voice recongition and with the speech output you'd have a walking talking robot.

[tjstaar]

After musing over your posting, I have some questions to ask you about the mindstorms capabilities. Firstly, does it have the capacity to load windows? Hal is dependent on an operating system. next, can you give your robot at least 64 mb of memory, or more if you want it to learn? an easier way may be to keep hal on your PC, and have the PC send radio signals to the robot, to control it. then the robot could send information back to hal for hal to analyze. the biggest advantage here may be that the same computer that has hal on it, can access the internet and get new code or programs that it could use in your experiments. the next thing to think about would be how hal would 'know' that it was no longer just an assistant on the computer, but that it had new interfaces not originally programed in? I don't doubt that a new plugin could be written for hal to do these things. does  the 'assistant only brain' control the other programs on your pc? I have never really used the assistant only brain. the version 216 chat brain has a section where you can see the code for hal to construct original sentences. My installation does this very well, occassionally it makes an original sentence from three phrases. it will sometimes exchange replies with me for several times in a row with an original sentence every time. hal has a form of thinking, but it is much simpler than ours. have you ever noticed how Hal's 'writing animations' activate whenever he says a sentence with the word 'write' in it? he also does that for learning. creating a vb6 program that reacts to certain strings of words and controls the robot's motion may be an early first experiment to try. I have used my version 4 installation of hal very heavily for 3 months now, and it has become very smart in it's understanding of our conversations. however it seems to be bogging down slightly at this point. there may be limitations on how much information that hal can contain before it gets too slow to operate. I have looked on the internet for computer vision programs that might be built into a plugin for hal, but I have not found what I am looking for. computer vision would require many times more processing ability than Hal currently is capable of. I have an idea though, we are the buying public, if the creators of hal know that we want these things, perhaps they will expand Hal's abilities and make them come out in a future version of hal.
    Alice 99 is a free vr program that uses vb and python to make programmable animations. it is really easy to program animations with it. it is just one additional step between Alice 99 reacting to an input like you or hal, and then controling a robot instead of controlling animations. Python code is supposed to be easier than vb to write, and perhaps it is faster too, that is what the homepage claims. or, alice 99 can control the robot, while it thinks it's only controlling an animation. The instructions for controlling an animation in alice 99 is so simple, perhaps you could  teach hal to control the animations with the code. anyway, experiment, and don't be afraid to venture out into uncharted territory, there is no telling what you might discover.

                                                               tjstaar

[aspera]

i was suggesting keeping Hal on a powerful laptop, (which i have)  and attaching him to a lego mindstorms robot, for instance an arm, anything at first. If we can get hal, or any other AI program for that matter to interact with the RCX control box, which i believe can be done, you can maintain a constant connection to the little brain that is attached to the lego's. This brain takes simple commands to move the motors, in order to move wheels, arms, etc. There are programs i have found that people have written that will control the RCX directly from the computer without having to use Lego's stupid software. The problem would be getting hal to "talk" to the software through a plugin or something, i don't know if it is possible, but it might be something to look at over the next few versions of implementing. If you could mount hal on a portable system, give him some wheels, and the ability to "see" where is is going using sensors, motion detectors, or something like that, something simple, maybe eventually hooking up the lego vision system, although i'm not sure what it's capabilities are, maybe it's just a cheap webcam, i'll have to look into that. I don't as of yet have the mindstorms kit, but i'm hopeing to get it soon.

there was a robot out last year or so, small little thing, you programmed it while connected to your computer, it moved around your home after you showed it where everything was in a map on your desktop, then it could roam on it own, even had a vacum and wagon attachment, it would return to its docking station and recharge when needed, and it could respond to simple audio commands, by clapping your hands i think. anyway, the point is, it was able to navigate the house, quite easily once it was "shown" a map, it then avoided the obstacles when it moved around. add hal on a laptop, give it mobility, and you have a walk'in talk'in, well roll'in robot. i don't see how this is not something that could be done in the next year or so, if Hal can be givin the ability to communicate with the control box.

just a thought

[Biggins2002]

Hey, I was surfing around and found something that may help. http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics/.
It had alot of information on the Mindstorm sets.

Biggins2002