At this part of the lab, I wrote a programme that can display my English name in an iterative loop. And also it has a “beep——” at the beginning.
Program the brain
Using an oscilloscope to read fast response signals (but failed)
Use the sensors
At this part, I wrote a programme to apply the micro: bit as a compass. Moreover, if you push the A button, it will send you a heart.
Think about a basic animal behavior system
Kris and I were thinking of building a basic animal-simulating system, then we came up with an idea to connect a servomotor with the gravity sensor in the micro: bit and adjust the servomotor according to the value of the sensor. By combining these two parts, we can create a simple sample of a balance system similar to the cooperation of animals’ cerebella and limbs.
Connect it
Moreover, we tried to connect two servomotors at the same time, but the delay between the two servomotors is too long that they cannot cooperate with each other simultaneously.
Extra tiny project
In the last 15min of the lab, I found it pretty fun playing with micro: bit, so I used the rest of the time to write a simple programme to have fun. It makes the board repeatedly display “LIKE⬅️” on the board, and if you do press the left button, a little heart will come out. However, if you insist to push the right one, something bad emerges…
The “Game of life”, as Martin Gardner analyzed, was structured by applying simple rules that can make the population unpredictable, and also let the cells birth and die simultaneously to warrant every single generation of life becomes a “move” in the “life history” of the original cells.
Zhigang Shao and Tao Chen did some researches for the final consistent density of live cells in the EDR lattice.
The density of live cells ρ(t) as a function of time t at the lattice for ρ0 = 0.2, 0.35, and 0.5 with the system with size L=104
They first applied three initial values of the density with a size of 10 to the fourth power and noticed that some of the graphs end up with the density closes to 0.37 eventually.
The stable point ρ as a function of the initial density of live sites ρ0
Then they applied a number of initial density to the graphs and surprisingly found out that the initial densities between about 0.25 to 0.6 will all finally end up with a density of 0.37.
The stable point of density of live cells ρ as a function of system size L
Later on, they expended the range to a larger size and proved that the phenomenon appears at the scale of 10 to the fourth power is not a specific coincidence, and applied the MFA to get the density result of 0.37017.
At last, they used the MC simulation jumped to the conclusion that the final consistent density of live cells is 0.37± 0.003.
Besides, the essay that really surprised me is Carter Bays’s “Candidates for the Game of Life in Three Dimensions”. He successfully found several decent rules for the three-dimensional version of the “Game of life”, which is the discovery that I have thought of but never virtually done. The three-dimensional version truly provides a new perspective to comprehend the game and squared the fun of the game to a higher altitude.
Find code examples
automata cellular basic 1 by Tomas de Camino
This implementation initials the pixels by lines and makes them change their color gradually according to the color of the pixels around them.
Cellular Automata for Diffusion by aa_debdeb
This implementation changes the brightness and the size of the circle fixed on the board according to their nearby neighbors’ status.
Cellular Automata3 by Chun-Ju, Tai
This implementation shows the cells in circles and applied the algorithms to calculate the size, the color, and the position of the circles to create a beautiful graph of cellular automata.
Tinker the implementations
Changed the rectangles into ellipsesChanged the rectangles into shades from rectangles to ellipsesApplied more red to the graphs (An interesting discovery is the shining line coming from the corner)
[The code is posted below]
/*Tomas de Camino para el taller de rogramacion de MDI veritas Base para armar un automata celular. */
//Adjusted by Yile Xu
//construye el arreglo para el automata celular int spaceSize = 100; float rectSize; int[][] cellSpace = new int[spaceSize][spaceSize];
void setup() { size(600, 600); //inicializa las celdas for (int i =0; i < spaceSize; i++) { for (int j =0; j < spaceSize; j++) { cellSpace[i][j] = i*j; } } rectSize = width / spaceSize; colorMode(HSB, 100*100, 100, 100); }
void draw() { noStroke(); smooth(); for (int i =0; i < spaceSize; i++) { for (int j =0; j < spaceSize; j++) { fill( cellSpace[i][j],50, 150); ellipse(i*rectSize, j*rectSize, rectSize, rectSize); fill( cellSpace[spaceSize-i-1][spaceSize-j-1], 255,100); ellipse(i*rectSize, j*rectSize, rectSize, rectSize); //para que sea ciclico if (cellSpace[i][j]>=10000) { cellSpace[i][j]=0; } else { cellSpace[i][j]+=10; } } } }
Reflect
The “Game of life” is really a brilliant invention conducted by Conway. And by applying a different shape, different color, and even different dimension to the game, some other implementations made by the other scientists show us the various possibilities of it.
On the path of discovery, we all need faith to go not only deeper, but also boarder. Sometimes a tiny theme looks as simple as the “Game of life” could derive to multiple expansions and applications.
Moreover, this tiny game gave us lots of thought related to our topic “bio-inspired robot system”. For instance, what does it look like if cellulars was affected by their neighbors? How might the whole part of cellulars evolve and is there an end for it, where is the end of it? These are all valuable thoughts the game virtually brings to us.
Reference
MATHEMATICAL GAMES——The fantastic combinations of John Conway’s new solitaire game “life”, by Martin Gardner, Scientific American 223 (October 1970): 120-123.
complex Systems 1 (1987) 373-400, Candidates for the Game of Life in Three Dimensions’, Carter Bays, Department of Computer Science, University of So uth Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA
