Shane, But it seems to me that modeling the physics of sensors and actuators isn't the main problem -- there are real problems of computational resources, if one wants to simulate, say, the complexity and diversity of a forest. I believe the approach you describe works to simulate the experience of a robot moving around in a lab environment, but by eliminating the rich diversity of a natural environment, this approach may be missing the primary point about why embeddedness in the world is valuable for a learning or evolving AGI. In a forest there are so many different things with so many different behaviors, that can be combined in so many different ways. I think that a non-physical-environment-like simulation with this degree of diversity, would be more useful for a baby AGI than an accurate simulation of a nondiverse, stale, lab-like physical-world environment.
-- Ben G > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf > Of Shane > Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 9:22 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [agi] virtual worlds > > > > It's true that making a virtual world with the richness of the real > > world is damn tough. I agree that giving an AGI access to real-world > > sensors and actuators is important, yet I also believe that a lot of > > teaching and learning of AGI's can be done in simulated worlds. IMO, > > the practical hassles of robotics are larger as the benefits, for the > > current stage of AGI work. However, this is largely an issue of > > financing -- with bucks to hire a team of robotics engineers to solve > > Yes, in fact this is a common "issue" in AI. Some of the guys where I > work are currently addressing this problem by building simulators which > contain full physics models. Thus you don't just have an agent in the > environment, but rather you have a fully simulated virtual robot - even > the sensors are simulated. The virtual robot has a physical version too so > it's possible to set up a virtual and an equivalent real world experiment > and then compare the results to check that the two match up. Of course > the > idea is that when it's finished you will be able to quickly and cheaply > set up detailed virtual experiments and be pretty sure that if you used > the expensive real robot you would get almost identical results. > > Shane > > ------- > To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your > subscription, > please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
