Seeing red

[emjay]

Say you have a cube with nine 'panels' on each face, like a Rubik's cube, and each of those panels represents a pressure sensor and has a corresponding neuron in the input layer, then it would be interesting to see what representations and expectations form in the network given simulations of what could happen to it... such as just laying on a table (ie nine panels active)... being pushed off a table (nine panels + one on an adjoining face... representing pushing it along with a finger... then some of the nine opposite from where the pressure is turning off as the cube hangs over the edge before falling... then the random way it bounces, rolls, and comes to rest at the bottom, meaning 3 panels each from two adjoining faces if it bounces on an edge, and 1 each from three faces if it bounces on a corner etc... no pattern in the which faces/edges/corners hit first after the fall but you would still expect a general pattern of it's movement to emerge... the rolling motion. Then to 'evolve' this thing you would just add panels/mini-cubes to the surface and add corresponding neurons to the input layer. I'm just curious to see what sort of representations would form and if it could come to represent its own shape. I'm just thinking that about the question of what could be the simplest hypothetical organism to model where you could see, scaled down massively, the principles at work in the human brain.

Sounds a lot like this to me:

Wow, that looks so cool. I've downloaded it now and it looks just the sort of puzzle game I like so I think I'll have a lot of fun with that. 

I see where you're coming from it comparing it to my idea - in that it's got bumpers taking the place of my 'panels' for the robot that he's inside and gets to wire up - but mine was nowhere near as exciting Mine would just be 'presenting' to the network the various patterns that I decided on to represent the events of the outside world and then examining what the neurons learned to detect. But it wouldn't be software like this... it would just be a neural network. But now you've shown this to me it does suggest a way to make it a bit more interesting... to represent my cube... well make it a square... as a sprite in simple virtual world and give it more than just bumpers but also other simple sensors and thrusters for movement. And then perhaps have it 'needing' batteries like in this game and see how it behaves. But that would be a lot more complicated but still a fun project. Who knows, it could help with yours? They could be your little minions?   What do you say... would you like to work on that together? Like we did with Unity?