PROGRAMMING WITH PYTHON. Milestone 0. Actor-Environment Baseline

emerging-mind lab (EML)
eJournal ISSN 2567-6466
29.Nov. 2017
info@emerging-mind.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
EMail: gerd@doeben-henisch.de
FRA-UAS – Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences
INM – Institute for New Media (Frankfurt, Germany)

ZIP-FOLDER

SUMMARY

This small software package is a further step in the exercise to learn python3 while trying to solve a given theoretical problem. The logic behind this software can be described as follows:

  1. This software shall be an illustration to a simple case study from the uffmm.org site. The text of the case study is not yet finished, and this software will be extended further in the next weeks/ months…
  2. The base-version of this software offers the user a menu-driven start to define  a simple test-environment where he can investigate the behaviour of (yet) simple actors. At the end of a test run (every run can have n-many cycles, there can be m-many repetitions of a run) a simple graphic shows the summarized results.
  3. The actual actors are without any kind of perception, no memory, no computational intelligence, they are completely driven either by a fixed rule or by chance. But they are consuming energy which decreases during time and they will ‚die‘ if they can not find new energy.
  4. A more extended description of the software will follow apart from the case study as well as within the case study.
  5. The immediate next extensions will be examples of simple sensory models (smelling, tasting, touching, hearing, and viewing). Based on this   some exercises will follow with simple memory structures, simple model-building capabilities, simple language constructs, making music, painting pictures, do some arithmetic. For this the scenario has to be extended that there are at least three actors.
  6. By the way, the main motivation for doing this is philosophy of science: exercising the construction of an emerging-mind where all used parts and methods are know. Real Intelligence can never be described by its parts only; it is an implicit function, which makes the ‚whole‘ different  to the so-called ‚parts‘. As an side-effect there can be lots of interesting applications helping humans to become better humans 🙂 But, because we are free-acting systems, we can turn everything in ins opposite, turning  something good into ‚evil’…

SOME BACKGROUND STORY

some background story

Gerd Doeben-Henisch
info@emerging-mind.org
gerd@doeben-henisch.de

PDF

abstract

Some information about the motive behind this project; some historical remarks.

RELAUNCHE

This relaunch of the eJournal emerging-mind.org (ISSN 2567-6458) is motivated by an international book project rewriting the ideas of systems engineering (SE), actor-actor interaction (AAI) as part of systems engineering, as well as intelligent machines (IM) as part of AAI. There is also an introductory part which talks explicitly about the implicit philosophical assumptions which underlie a systems engineering approach in general. This book is written embedded in a public process documented on the uffmm.org website.

SOME GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

While the above mentioned book develops a strong formal framework for all the mentioned topics, such a pure formal approach is not enough. The processes described in the book are intended real processes in real environments relying heavily on software. Therefore it is an equally important question which kind of software framework can help in the application of the theory. The following requirements are considered as being important for the development of the emerging-mind lab.

AAI Theory

As one can read on the uffmm-site a radical formal approach is applied there to describe the analysis phase of systems engineering as it is realized by an actor-actor interaction approach. But for the real work this is not enough, one needs for the practical (industrial) work in the end software tools which support the formal theory to do the real work.

Intelligent Machines

Intelligent machines are analysed in the book as actor models within actor stories. Thus models can only be used as real dynamic processes if they are translated into real software within real computers. And this should be done in accordance with the AAI-paradigm.

Local Learning Environments

There is a third requirement which stems from the context of education and experimental research.

Today everybody has a computer or a smart-phone to log into some network which provides lots of services from somewhere. The network as such also the services as such are usually not open for experimental usage. But in education as well as in research one needs complex settings and one needs open structures, which can be changed.

For this one needs a local learning environment which contains its own network server with different clients (computers, smart-phones, raspi, robots, and so on) which can have more smaller clients like sensor, actors etc.

Solution Candidates

Although the search for an optimal hardware and software environment has not yet finished we have two first interesting candidates as main part of the intended structure: It is (i) the robot operating system (ROS) (see: http://www.ros.org/) running on ubuntu (actually only on the long term version 14.04), and, with a different scope, (ii) the tensorflow framework (see: https://www.tensorflow.org/).

How to Continue?

The next possible readings are:

  1. EML ROS-Environment. Basic Ideas
  2. Python Programming. Part 1. Simple Environment-Actor Demo

emerging-mind – RESTART OF EMERGING-MIND AS SOFTWARE-LAB FOR UFFMM.ORG

This is a completely new restart of the old emerging-mind website. It is intended as a working place for those people who want to establish software for learning systems in the full spectrum of live.

Emerging-mind lab is connected to the scientific workplace uffmm.org, where a new general theory is emerging comprising the topics:

The emerging-mind lab offers a software-environment to implement the ideas from uffmm.org and even more.

How to Continue?

Read the Background Story