Braitenberg vehicles are simple automatons proposed by the German cyberneticist V Braitenberg to illustrate the abilities of reactive agents, thus representing the simplest form of behavior based artificial intelligence or embodied cognition, i.e. intelligent behavior that emerges purely from sensorimotor interaction between the agent and its environment, without any need for an internal memory, representation of the environment, or inference. A Braitenberg vehicle is an automaton that can autonomously move around. It has primitive light sensors and wheels (each driven by its own motor) that function as actuators or effectors. A sensor is directly connected to an effector, so that a sensed signal immediately produces a movement of the wheel. Depending on how sensors and wheels are connected, the vehicle exhibits different, goal-oriented behaviors. This means that it appears to strive to achieve certain situations and to avoid others, changing course when the situation changes.
A revised and updated edition of this weird science classic.Confined in Bedlam in 1797 as an incurable lunatic, James Tilly Matthews' case is one of the most bizarre in the annals of psychiatry. He was the first person to insist that his mind was being controlled by a machine: the Air Loom, a terrifying secret weapon whose mesmeric rays and mysterious gases were brainwashing politicians and plunging Europe into revolution, terror and war.But Matthews' case was even stranger than his doctors realised: many of the incredible conspiracies in which he claimed to be involved were entirely real. Caught up in high-level diplomatic intrigues in the chaos of the French revolution, he found himself betrayed by both sides, and in possession of a secret that no-one would believe.
On February 24, 1709, French inventor and artist Jacques Vaucanson was born, who is best known for the creation of impressive and innovative automata and machines such as the first completely automated loom.
D. Miller, and E. Fredkin. (2005)cite arxiv:nlin/0501022Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication in proceedings of ACM Computing Frontiers 2005 (CF'05), special session: 1st Int'l Workshop on Reversible Computing. website: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/danbmil/salt/.
M. Blum, and C. Hewitt. Proceedings of the 8th Annual Symposium on Switching and Automata Theory (SWAT 1967), page 155--160. Washington, DC, USA, IEEE Computer Society, (1967)