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• Inspiration

  Holotype Robotics • 12/19/2023 at 15:57 • 0 comments

  The idea for this wireless robot behavior control module came from discovering ESPboy, a versatile ESP8266-based device with a display, buttons, speaker and extensions for applications ranging from gaming to IoT experiments.

  What stood out about ESPboy was the simplicity of design and wireless connectivity. It provided interactive real-time manipulation through a remote terminal.

  I realized a similar concept could be applied to robotics - enabling tweaking behavior configurations and variables on the fly remotely rather than at a computer or needing to hard code changes and restart. Since usually only minor adjustments are needed to tune behaviors, this allows faster iteration.

  This control module seeks to replicate ESPboy's simplicity for real-time interactivity. Running an SSH server on the robot allows remote access from the handheld unit to directly update configurations being fed into the cognition model.

  Inspired by ESPboy’s accessibility and extensibility, this module brings that same rapid tweaking capability to robot platforms. Quickly reinforcing behaviors by providing positive and negative rewards can accelerate learning. The wireless interface separates out experiment complexity.

  The goal is responsive robots through responsive controls. More to come as this concept takes shape.

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