The Braitenberg Vehicles

Brian Douglas · 64K views · 2015 · 15:28

Open on YouTube

RoboticsConsciousness & cognitionexplainer

Why Hacker News recommends it

Recommended as a short, fascinating introduction to how simple sensor-actuator machines can appear intelligent.

What it is

Brian Douglas introduces Braitenberg vehicles, simple robots whose sensors are wired directly to motors yet show surprisingly lifelike behavior. He draws on Valentino Braitenberg's book Vehicles.

Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2020 to 2024.

What Hacker News said

Recommends gherkinnn · 2020-02 · on “Kernighan's Law: You are not smart enough to debug it”

Uphill Analysis, Downhill Synthesis is a major point in the book Vehicles . [0] Fascinating thought experiments. Here’s an introduction on YT [1], though it really only scratches the surface. [0] [LINK] [1] [this video]

Recommends rramadass · 2024-05 · on “The Nature of Code (2nd Edition)”

I am forever indebted to this book for pointing me to Valentino Braitenberg's Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology ( [LINK] ) where very simple autonomous sensor/actuator machines combine to exhibit complex behaviour which maybe mistaken for "Intelligence". Makes you really think abut Complexity/Intelligence/Emergent Behaviour/etc. Wikipedia : [LINK] Some Videos: [LINK] [this video]

Cites DonHopkins · 2023-01 · on “Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996) [video]”

At the time I was actually pretty skeptical about how hard it would be to get the AI to work plausibly (and so was Will, but somehow he managed to do it), and I though an online game like The Sims Online would be easier. But leveraging the player's imagination and supporting storytelling was key. Will mentioned a "Braitenberg Machine": [LINK] >A Braitenberg vehicle is a concept conceived in a thought experiment by the Italian-Austrian cyberneticist Valentino Braitenberg. The book models the animal world in a minimalistic and constructive way, from simple reactive behaviours (like phototaxis) through the simplest vehicles, to the formation of concepts, spatial behaviour, and generation of ide