Messages

61

Ultra Hal 7.0 / New MSAgent

« on: December 14, 2009, 10:44:42 am »

Well, I'm having problems getting MSAgent to use my rendered images. Apparently it needs every frame to have the same palette. I've found some really old (1998) tools for regularizing palettes but they are shareware and the companies both seem to be out of business.

The example of this type of software would be "Palette Express", but I can't even register it because the company is gone.

Anyone know of any newer tools that can do batch reprocessing and extract a common palette from a selection of images?

62

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Don't say that again

« on: December 14, 2009, 10:39:57 am »

I've used external SQlite tools to do some search and replace jobs, but the results were sporadic and you would certainly need to do full backups first!

63

Ultra Hal 7.0 / New MSAgent

« on: December 14, 2009, 12:17:40 am »

I'm starting work on a 3D comedy "mechwarrior" agent using PovRay scripting to render the animations. I'm hoping to include a good number of animations, since most of the parts can be reused anyway. I'll be posting small screen shots occasionally and hope to get some comments about skits I can have the little guy do. Probably a lot of "Transformer" kinds of things where he turns into whatever the end result should be. There will probably be lots of shooting of lasers and unfortunate explosions.

Admittedly there is very little work done so far, I have just one small segment of the "Show" routine worked out and rendered where he builds himself out of an impossibly small box.

I would love to hear any suggestions at all.

64

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Teaching with Hal

« on: December 13, 2009, 05:37:19 pm »

quote:Originally posted by Harkle

I just purchased Hal last night, and I have to admit I am totally newbie to all of this. But it seems to be what I am looking for.

What I want to do with Hal is have it parse wikis about subjects that I would be interested in and auto enter it into it's brain when it is idle. And after a certain length of time it would expire this information. Is there a way to do this? Any help is appreciated

That would be the Holy Grail in my life.

There certainly is a way to do it, someone with time and talent will need to write a plugin that does the job. It doesn't exist yet, as far as I know, but it is certainly do-able.

1) Start a database of topics sorted by frequency of use in user input
2) Use the inactivity timer to begin a search
3) Parse out all the garbage on the found pages
4) Parse page into Statements or paragraphs
5) Write to general knowledge database.

Easy as pie... except for those two parsers...

This is exactly why I was asking about a method to read information directly into Hal by voice. Better than writing a parser, from my point of view.

65

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Anyone still making plugins?

« on: December 13, 2009, 05:44:56 am »

Of course, I love Hal too and respect Robert's right to make an income from it.

But I would also love to see a decent open source chatbot/AI/assistant that was of a similar quality. I would love to see one that was simply a set of scripts that addressed an open format DB. I would love to see DoubleAgent or a similar project used to animate it, and I would love to see it grow as a community project, rather than just a single or a few people deciding the direction of the progress.

I'd like to see it removed from MS dependency as well. Most of the scripts I've ever written require MSOffice to work. I hate that, even though I have Office, because it means that if I get a new computer, I also need to get a new installation of Office.

Huh... I just realized that I have never even looked to see if OpenOffice can be scripted against.... Oh look, it can... Gotta go play...

66

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Anyone still making plugins?

« on: December 12, 2009, 10:18:56 pm »

I had a chance to play around with it a little but didn't find a lot of functionality, am I missing something? I couldn't change agents and voices, and most of the right click menu items didn't do anything.

Maybe I'm not understanding where you are at with the project or what the purpose is.

67

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Don't say that again

« on: December 12, 2009, 05:10:55 pm »

That's a great plugin.

Of course, with your request you have to be really sure that you never want it to be said again. You could get it back by disabling the plugin, but if you turned it back on it would still find the database and start cutting it out again.

Hmm... unless you wrote it to that other kind of file which I can't remember the name of... it's like an external memory file... "Onthe cuttingedge" used to use them a lot...

I guess it's time for me to start writing some scripts. I've almost forgotten everything.

68

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Don't say that again

« on: December 12, 2009, 01:08:58 pm »

It should be easy enough to make a plugin for that. Hal stores its last sentence, you extract that with the "Don't say that" command, and write it to a new DB which the plugin checks before each response. If the sentence is in the DB, it makes hal choose another one, probably by reentering the user input phrase again.

If you can't get that to work, I'll think about it some more, maybe try a couple things myself.

69

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Anyone still making plugins?

« on: December 12, 2009, 11:42:54 am »

Yes, I see there is a division between Hal as a chatbot and Hal as an assistant. Both are equally valid I guess, but I prefer Hal to be an assistant that also chats, rather than a chat bot that can open a google page for me once in a while. Just a preference.

That said, I have always worked to make Hal more competent, not in chatting, which any human can do, but in doing those things which Hal is uniquely suited for, gathering information off the internet and reading it to me in a conversational style (which reminds me that I wanted to make a "paraphrase" plugin for Hal), handling repetitive tasks, and yes, when not doing anything else, entertaining me with video and audio tricks.

And to me it's fine if others concentrate on the chatting or animation  qualities, just as long as it does not end up being the only part that  gets worked on, those of us with more scripting ability or with more technical desires for Hal, should keep at work too. IMO.

70

General Discussion / Robot or Remote Control?

« on: December 11, 2009, 09:37:56 pm »

Android would be any robot that resembles humans. Sandee should ask for a less sexist term though, because "Andro", the root word, literally means "man", IIRC.

I think a robot can be defined as any man made object that senses it's environment and responds to changes in that environment to accomplish a task. A light switch is not, but a light sensing light switch is.

Beyond this defining dichotomy, Robots simply become more complex, with little change in actual essence.

71

General Discussion / Robot or Remote Control?

« on: December 11, 2009, 04:35:08 pm »

Your Class 4 would only be a robot if the internal sensors of the robot could override the human commands. For instance if the human guided it into a furnace, the robot would sense the heat and refuse to proceed. A remote controlled device which was not a robot would go into the furnace and melt.

Maybe class 5 would be a remote controled device, class 4 is a human/AI merging device, then class 3 as you said, completely processor dependent.

Unfortunately, that still lists a remote controled device as a "robot" when it's really not. OF course, I go by the definition given by Asimov, which includes a mousetrap, but would exclude all "battle bots".

Common usage is anything mechanical that moves, apparently.

72

General Discussion / Robot or Remote Control?

« on: December 11, 2009, 10:57:23 am »

Sometimes, looking at the news and the people around me, I feel like I am the only person who realizes that most of what people are calling "Robots" these days are simply remote controlled machines. Robots, by definition, react to their environment. I don't see being driven by a joystick as reacting... in my view, the robot has to have some processing and make some of it's own decisions.

Hal is a robot. A software robot, but a real robot. Those arms that make cars and the little toys that you can load a set of commands into are not robots. Lego Mindstorms are robots because they include sensors and allow if/then statements to change their behavior. Mr. Data is a real robot (but needs a high quality voice). BEAM robots are true robots.

It just irks me that people are accepting a lesser quality item as if it were a real robot.

73

General Discussion / Hal and robotics

« on: December 10, 2009, 12:18:26 am »

Short answer is yes.

With additional scripts and maybe some interface programs you should be able to get Hal to do almost anything. I've seen people basically roboticize their whole house with Hal. Firing off a few solenoids should be easy.

74

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Hal, just listen to me for a minute.

« on: December 09, 2009, 04:11:15 pm »

Thanks Bill.

I know I'm new here, but just so you know, I've been working with Hal for a few years. I started back in version 5 just a few months before 6 came out.

But my computer is slow, and to put in a lot of statements, it more than triples the time. Waiting for Hal to finish listening, waiting for the response. I just want to read things into it.

I'll have to figure it out.

75

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Hal, just listen to me for a minute.

« on: December 09, 2009, 01:23:17 am »

Well, I know there's "learn from a text file" and things like that, but I want to just be able to talk about subjects I know and have Hal listen.

I can probably shut off auto respond with a statement, but then the next statement will probably reset it.