NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Hello,

We often heard about Lego Mindstorms Robot here, with Ada in the place. I  
just saw an advertising on a web site leading to this:
http://developer.aldebaran-robotics.com/join/?gclid=CNjagrbsrqkCFYINfAodq1-lJw

Is Ada in that place too ?

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”  [Epigrams on  
Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [Idem]
“c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */” [Anonymous]

Re: NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Sun, 12 Jun 2011 00:03:19 +0200, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote:

> We often heard about Lego Mindstorms Robot here, with Ada in the place. I  
> just saw an advertising on a web site leading to this:
> http://developer.aldebaran-robotics.com/join/?gclid=CNjagrbsrqkCFYINfAodq1-lJw

500 MHz / 256 MB look pretty barren for any sort of AI + control + image
processing [+ voice recognition].
 
-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 13 Jun 2011 09:19:53 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:

> On Sun, 12 Jun 2011 00:03:19 +0200, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote:
>
>> We often heard about Lego Mindstorms Robot here, with Ada in the place.  
>> I
>> just saw an advertising on a web site leading to this:
>> http://developer.aldebaran-robotics.com/join/?gclid=CNjagrbsrqkCFYINfAodq1-lJw
>
> 500 MHz / 256 MB look pretty barren for any sort of AI + control + image
> processing [+ voice recognition].
Add to this, 2 GB of flash memory.

Yes, that's not the must, but already more than what's available to the  
Lego Mindstorm.
And there was old experiment with AI and Prolog, oin the 80's, on machines  
with less than that.
The video seems to suggest you to not run numerous applications in the  
mean time anyway.

What's really blocking, is the price : I saw a video on YouTube, someone  
stated a price as hight as $4000. Compare that to the average $250 of the  
Lego Mindstorm. The concept seems still appealing. I could compare some  
video of experiments with Nao on one hand and Mindstorm on another. Seems  
the appearance of the robot influance a lot the kind of experience owners  
attempt. Mindstorm, which more looks like a machine, seems to inspire  
stuff like ware, brutale force animal, industry like automation, and the  
like, while the kind of experiment Nao seems to inspire, looks more  
appealing.

500Mhz without any desktop and web-browser running, also immediately looks  
more (I believe).

Nothing is said about the CPU (or I did not see) : an ARM too ? If that's  
an ARM, GNAT would be already ready for that.

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”  [Epigrams on  
Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [Idem]
“c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */” [Anonymous]

Re: NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 09:55:04 +0200, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote:

> Le Mon, 13 Jun 2011 09:19:53 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
> <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a �crit:
> 
>> On Sun, 12 Jun 2011 00:03:19 +0200, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote:
>>
>>> We often heard about Lego Mindstorms Robot here, with Ada in the place.  
>>> I
>>> just saw an advertising on a web site leading to this:
>>> http://developer.aldebaran-robotics.com/join/?gclid=CNjagrbsrqkCFYINfAodq1-lJw
>>
>> 500 MHz / 256 MB look pretty barren for any sort of AI + control + image
>> processing [+ voice recognition].
> Add to this, 2 GB of flash memory.

Yes, for a incremental machine learning you would like to have more to
store the learnt stuff, provided the robot would operate more or less
autonomous. (I have an impression that robots like this are rather mobile
sensors/actuators connected over WiFi the host (brain) than true robots.)

> Yes, that's not the must, but already more than what's available to the  
> Lego Mindstorm.

It also lacks standard industrial I/O interfaces for the sensors and
actuators (e.g. EtherCAT or CAN etc), which would allow you to customize
the motherboard and the processor (processors).

> And there was old experiment with AI and Prolog, oin the 80's, on machines  
> with less than that.

I doubt that Prolog can be useful for the AI deployed in a robot. There is
not much inference it would do, more problems like path finding, which are
not logical. Further, even considering logical problems you rather need
fuzzy inference than Prolog's stuff. And certainly Prolog is absolutely
useless for image processing and control.

Ada is the only language you need, really!

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 13 Jun 2011 11:39:43 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
> Ada is the only language you need, really!

A bit frightening that they first though about a language like Python, C,  
C++, for such a hot area 8-| (well, why not C++, but at least, they should  
have added Ada too and dropped Python and C in the while)

Anyway, too much expensive for me, so I will stop here with that topic,  
although I feel I like this robot and would have enjoyed to play a bit  
with it… and do so with Ada, not Python, obviously (Python… what a silly  
idea for a such a task)

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”  [Epigrams on  
Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [Idem]
“c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */” [Anonymous]

Re: NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

[tmoran]

> Anyway, too much expensive for me, so I will stop here with that topic, =

Have you looked at Arduino?  I haven't tried it myself, but it was hot at
the recent SF Maker's Faire and does have Ada.

Re: NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:14:25 +0200, <tmoran@acm.org> a écrit:

>> Anyway, too much expensive for me, so I will stop here with that topic,  
>> =
>
> Have you looked at Arduino?  I haven't tried it myself, but it was hot at
> the recent SF Maker's Faire and does have Ada.
I found this about it on the web:
http://www.robotshop.com/eu/microcontroleur-arduino-uno-usb.html
Seems affordable indeed; that's not like to have a real robot with a human  
look, but still nice to experiment with. However, I could not see any  
reference to Ada in any sheet. Or did you think about this?:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/avr-ada/
Although not mentioned on the on-line shop (in the above link), according  
to Wikipedia, the Arduino embed an Atmel AVR micro-processor.

Much thanks for the good track :)

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”  [Epigrams on  
Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [Idem]
“c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */” [Anonymous]

Re: NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:14:25 +0200, <tmoran@acm.org> a écrit:
> Have you looked at Arduino?  I haven't tried it myself, but it was hot at
> the recent SF Maker's Faire and does have Ada.
OK, that's here. That's indeed AVR-Ada by the way.
http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Code/AVR-Ada


-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”  [Epigrams on  
Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [Idem]
“c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */” [Anonymous]

Re: NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 13 Jun 2011 11:39:43 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
> I doubt that Prolog can be useful for the AI deployed in a robot. There  
> is not much inference it would do, more problems like path finding,  
> which are not logical. Further, even considering logical problems you  
> rather need
> fuzzy inference than Prolog's stuff. And certainly Prolog is absolutely
> useless for image processing and control.
I started some time ago (not yet finished) a Prolog interpreter (actually  
in SML, the final implementation is planned to be Ada), in the purpose to  
solve some things I don't like with typical Prolog interpreters like  
SWI-Prolog (mostly with handling of infinite recursions, which I handle as  
something which is interpretable, and the so called Cut, which I dropped).  
As I worked on this, I can say with reasonable belief, that unification  
may use weighting, instead of exact match. This would open the door to  
real-world non-strictly symbolic data. Note that this would not be so much  
far from fuzzy logic. Then, logic is mainly a matter of coherence, and is  
not restricted to boolean algebra: any coherent system has logic. And the  
one of Prolog is natural enough: it maps well the way live forms,  
including humans, learns thing from their environment, “This is similar to  
That, I already encountered / I already know”, and this can include any  
kind of form recognition (pattern matching, by the way, is a kind of form  
recognition, the abstract way). Then, any fuzzy measurements, in AI,  
should probably be finally stored as a kind of symbolic data finally  
(abstracted down). This would just require dynamic creation of symbols. I  
honestly do not see any other way to do: complex data needs to be  
abstracted down, because the system must incorporate more and more  
knowledge, without growing linearly (compared to the quantity of data it  
has handled). Finally, this ends to reduce complex data to symbols.

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”  [Epigrams on  
Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [Idem]
“c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */” [Anonymous]

Re: NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:50:13 +0200, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote:

> Le Mon, 13 Jun 2011 11:39:43 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
> <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a �crit:
>> I doubt that Prolog can be useful for the AI deployed in a robot. There  
>> is not much inference it would do, more problems like path finding,  
>> which are not logical. Further, even considering logical problems you  
>> rather need fuzzy inference than Prolog's stuff. And certainly Prolog is absolutely
>> useless for image processing and control.

> I started some time ago (not yet finished) a Prolog interpreter (actually  
> in SML, the final implementation is planned to be Ada), in the purpose to  
> solve some things I don't like with typical Prolog interpreters like  
> SWI-Prolog (mostly with handling of infinite recursions, which I handle as  
> something which is interpretable, and the so called Cut, which I dropped).  
> As I worked on this, I can say with reasonable belief, that unification  
> may use weighting, instead of exact match.

The problem with all approaches to uncertainty be it fuzzy or
probabilistic, is that you cannot create loss-less inference. It does not
exist. A fuzzy engine has to track all possible alternatives defuzzifying
at the output using some heuristics to reduce the problem. Same is true for
probabilistic approaches with the difference that heuristics are much
weaker.

> any coherent system has logic.

Yes, any system has an interpretation within standard logic.

(which does not really help. E.g. does not create you an Ada compiler by
mere logical conclusions from the ARM and the input program (:-))

> Then, any fuzzy measurements, in AI,  
> should probably be finally stored as a kind of symbolic data finally  
> (abstracted down).

Uncertain measurements are continuous. Yes you do split truth levels /
probabilities into intervals, etc, but they leak into each other.

> This would just require dynamic creation of symbols. I  
> honestly do not see any other way to do: complex data needs to be  
> abstracted down, because the system must incorporate more and more  
> knowledge, without growing linearly (compared to the quantity of data it  
> has handled). Finally, this ends to reduce complex data to symbols.

Complex data, yes, an Ada program is complex data. No other way to build a
compiler than by using symbols (for each program one, I guess? (:-))

IMO, it would be easier to write a custom inference engine from scratch
than to bend Prolog to do things it cannot.

P.S. If you decide to do something, I have a compiler from Fuzzy Control
Language written in Ada.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 13 Jun 2011 18:26:31 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
> IMO, it would be easier to write a custom inference engine from scratch
> than to bend Prolog to do things it cannot.
>
> P.S. If you decide to do something, I have a compiler from Fuzzy Control
> Language written in Ada.
I use to learn the very basic only of fuzzy logic (and eventually,  
reinvented it when a day I played to extend classic logic with more than  
just two values), so I am just now having a quick look at
http://www.fuzzytech.com/binaries/ieccd1.pdf
to get a better idea


> P.S. If you decide to do something, I have a compiler from Fuzzy Control
> Language written in Ada.
Cannot assert what I will really do ( ;) ), but I am at least always  
interested in paradigms in the large (even more than to specific  
languages), so I am potentially interested, indeed. Is that on your web  
site ? If so, I will probably find it easily.

Have a nice day :)

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”  [Epigrams on  
Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [Idem]
“c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */” [Anonymous]

Re: NAO Robot : is Ada there too ?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 18:57:13 +0200, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote:

> Le Mon, 13 Jun 2011 18:26:31 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
> <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a �crit:
>> IMO, it would be easier to write a custom inference engine from scratch
>> than to bend Prolog to do things it cannot.
>>
>> P.S. If you decide to do something, I have a compiler from Fuzzy Control
>> Language written in Ada.
> I use to learn the very basic only of fuzzy logic (and eventually,  
> reinvented it when a day I played to extend classic logic with more than  
> just two values), so I am just now having a quick look at
> http://www.fuzzytech.com/binaries/ieccd1.pdf
> to get a better idea

Here is an extension (typed+intuitionistic+dimentioned) the compiler works
with:

http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de/ada/ifcl.htm

>> P.S. If you decide to do something, I have a compiler from Fuzzy Control
>> Language written in Ada.
> Cannot assert what I will really do ( ;) ), but I am at least always  
> interested in paradigms in the large (even more than to specific  
> languages), so I am potentially interested, indeed. Is that on your web  
> site ?

Yes, but as a part of a larger:

http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de/ada/fuzzy_ml.htm

That is because the compiler needs a back-end, in which case it is a
training set.

If you build an inference engine you will need only the compiler's
front-end and feed the engine from it.

> Have a nice day :)

Same to you.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de