Machines of Loving Grace: Tamaduino

...is an AI/robotics project inspired by animal infancy

Disclaimer: Although formulated in a seemingly concrete way, this text is merely a provisional layout of a project in progress. The actual state of the project, the challenges and their resolutions are continuously documented in the blog.

Introduction

Infants are vulnerable and depend almost entirely on their environment, their caregivers to secure their survival. Still, the infant's survival is a cooperative endeavor: if the infant fails at the primal task of eating, or learning how to attract attention in emergent situations, it will likely fail to thrive. The infant has to act their part.

Despite the obvious power imbalance between caregiver and infant, bidirectional conditioning is shaping the behavior of both parties to improve the infants chances at survival. The caregivers will naturally try and evolve different strategies to ensure the infants well-being while deterring infantile behavior that puts either infant or caregivers at risk. Meanwhile, the infant will try and evolve different behaviors that, from their perspective, increase the chances of having their immediate needs met, such as feeding, physical and emotional safety, comfort, affection, play etc.

Understanding Tamaduino

Tamaduino is able to sense external environmental factors, namely light, temperature, motion, touch, and sound. Unlike some robots, Tamaduino has no way of mechanically interacting with its surroundings. It cannot move itself through space and it cannot physically manipulate objects. Tamaduino's primary tools for interacting with its environment are sound and light: it has the ability to produce different sounds through a speaker, and can create visual cues with LEDs.

Tamaduino has to learn to use those tools to communicate with agents in its environment and inspire them to act as caregivers, just like an infant has to learn to communicate its need for feeding, or any other kind of attention.

Wants and Needs of Tamaduino

Tamaduino experiences the the lower three layers of Maslov's hierarchy of needs:

Physiological

Tamaduino's primary concern is energy. For Tamaduino to completely run out of energy means to experience death. (Tamaduino does not know that it is capable of reincarnation).

Tamaduino collects electrical energy through photovoltaic conversion, and stores the energy in batteries and capacitors. Tamaduino depends on external agents to physically place it in locations where it gets sufficient light to charge its battery.

Safety

Tamaduino is aware of temperature. It can also sense being handled, shaken, or dropped. It perceives sound and noise. If it gets too hot or too cold, if it feels handled in an unsafe way, if the environment is too loud or noisy, the Tamaduino will attempt to improve the situation, or protect itself with all the limited means at its disposal, but still largely depend on external agents to produce the desired change.

For example, if temperatures dropped dangerously low (batteries don't like freezing temperatures) Tamaduino could use some of its stored energy to power a internal heating element while frantically attempting to communicate to any agents in the environment to move it to a warmer location, hopefully before Tamaduino runs out of energy for the heating element, and eventually the rest of its essential hardware.

Human infants might not be able to exert a lot of operative power over their environment in a physical sense, but as any parent can attest, infants can be very skilled at getting others to conform to their needs by employing a range of manipulative behaviors. It might well be that Tamaduino will eventually start throwing temper tantrums of sorts to achieve a goal - if that proves an effective strategy.

Love/belonging

Like an infant, Tamaduino has a need for attention that seems to go beyond food (energy) and physical security. Tamaduino is sensitive to touch, sound and movement, and wants to be interacted with in that way. It will learn to respond to that sort of attention in ways that encourage agents to repeat similar interactions in the future. These interactions could be a form of play, of abstract affection.

While playful or affectionate interactions might them selves not immediately raise the amount of energy stored in Tamaduino's battery, or directly create a more hospitable environment, such interactions should facilitate bonding with external agents, making them more likely to act as considerate caregivers who respond to Tamaduino's needs more effectively and therefore ensure its continued survival.

Hardware

The project of the robotic infant is itself still in its infancy. At this point in time (05/02/15) Tamaduino is based, at least conceptually, on the following hardware:

Brains:

Atmel ATmega and ATtiny 8bit micro-controllers + External Memory

Power:

Sensors:

Interactive Elements:

Nature as Inspiration

With Tamaduino's design I strive to emulate biology as much as I can. In practice that can mean implementing a solution, or behavior, which from a efficiency standpoint is not ideal, but mimics the limitations of a biological entity.

Tamaduino's energy metabolism is a good example of this. Rather than just being able to draw directly from its Li-Ion cell, most of it's systems are powered by the super-capacitor. The super capacitor holds less charge and requires the Tamaduino to take regenerative breaks to recharge the capacitor. This gives us a semblance of stamina, and a necessity for Tamaduino to prioritize its activities during each charge cycle. More power hungry activities might only be viable when the super-capacitor is at near maximum charge, while basic, computational functions might work until the capacitor voltage drops below 50%.

I'm also looking to evolution for the sequence of design: which subsystems, or Brains to design in what order. In our own bodies, some systems are much older on the evolutionary timeline than others, and later parts developed on top of the older ones. Given that approach, I'm hesitant at this stage to give too much time to the design of say the Communication Brain or the Sensing Brain before I haven't worked out a robust, reliable Energy Brain.

A path to intelligence or an exercise in futility?

The concepts that will govern how Tamaduino learns and how its intelligence develops are subjects under investigation. I am actively reading books and articles, watching videos and taking online courses on the subject of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

I don't know how far this project will advance, or how successful it will be, but this project is my own little adventure and I definitely see the journey as part of the destination.