Hello Everyone,
I program in Visual Basic and I'm looking into commanding a robot via a normal computer serial cable. I'm just wondering if anyone at this group has attempted such a thing or has information on the technical aspect.
The ultimate Dream is to have an entity which can use its brain ("The Program") to reference information from a quick rendering database and then alternative resources like the Internet and other networked machines.
It's initial structure would be to take and respond to information - lets say their is a robotic face, nothing human like, but something that can digest English and then figure out whether it is information it should respond to or store for future reference.
Let me paint a picture.
Someone starts a Conversation with the Robot.
Person > "Hello. How are you Today?" Robot Figures, Hello is a Gesture and then their is a question. Robot > "Hello. I am fine. Yourself?" Lets assume the Person is a Blond Bimbo Talking Bimbo Lingo. Person > "Um Hello my Day has been Crap!"
This is what I am talking about, the Person has used Hello when she shouldn't of according to proper english grammer. But the Robot would then translate this without it's own gesture since it's not sure and reply with...
Robot > "Girlfriend!" Robot reponds with a mutual reply.
It could be translated as a gesture, so if the Robot can figure out who the person is, then they could say their name. It could also be translate as some sort of sympathetic comment. Such intelligence would be attributed to the Robot for any similar conversation event.
I have a draft text based proto-type designed, but the next stage is to enable the computer to read each word and then catagorize it and match it against a database of known words. Giving it greatest Intelligence in conversation and will allow it to learn new words, let me paint another picture.
1.0 = Hello //Gesture, Welcomming, Attention, New Conversation, Saying// 1.1 = Hi //Gesture, Welcoming, Attention, New Conversation// 2.0 = Bye //Parture, End Conversation, Parting// 2.1 = See ya //Parture, End Conversation, Parting//The Number is it's rating basically, the Hello is misplaced but for this example it can stay there. If we had say, 3 as "Sayings" then Hello would also go in there. Sentences received would be seen for their ratings and I belive a mathetmaical equation of the results would enable the Robot to reply with a understandable/logical response.
Note* // is just for the Example and represents how the program would read the value and its possible meanings. When it goes to learn a new word it will study the meaning given to it and then give it a rating or if one is suggested then it will use the suggested rating.
After this intial project of mine is completed I want to go on to create a Robot that responds to physical situations in logical and Intelligent ways.
So if I may paint another picture, if the Robot has technical errors a technician can say "Hello, How are you Today?" and if their are errors the Robot will say "Bad, so many Errors" then the Techie could go into detail and say "Okay 'Some Special Word'" then the computer makes a print out verbally or on paper of the errors experiances - just like going to the doctors!