Hello,
I have had a lot of stray robotic thoughts running through my head lately and I thought I would share some of them, so I created this blog.
Anyone who might be new to LMR should not mistake me for someone who actually knows what they are talking about. I am new to robotics and am currently working on my first robot project.
I will post several topics to this blog, some may be technical, other's quite subjective. Feel free to comment, agree, or disagree as you like. The primary purpose of these entries will be to simply chat and have a good time. Take nothing I say too seriously or to heart.
-Hal (kingart3)
Mental Approaches to Problem Solving
Introduction
Over the years I have spent a lot of time around engineers, technicans and other “problem solvers”. As a computer programmer, I tend to think of everything in steps, breaking things down into steps, etc. Over time I realized that not everyone approached problem solving that way. In this blog entry I intend to discuss the two ways of problem solving I have observed and their relative strengths and weaknesses.
Step thinking
In engineering you are often presented with a problem or a set of requirements. You then attempt to come up with a solution to the problem and this in turn is broken into steps which implement the solution. This is common in computer programming. A problem may be addressed by one or more programs which are each broken into subroutines, which are each composed of lines. There is really nothing radical about step thinking, its used from everything from rocket science to baking a loaf of bread. Almost any cook book will break how to prepare something into steps.
Continued…
Strengths:
Step thinking has several strengths. For one it creates a complete plan that takes the solution from start to finish. Also step thinking tends to consider each step in detail for possible problems. Where you are on a project and when it will be done are much easier to estimate with step thinking. If you are 5 steps through a 10 step plan and all steps require equal time you are 50% finished. Step thinking is by far the most common problem solving approach I encounter and what comes naturally to myself.
Weaknesses:
The greatest weakness of step thinking is it can get stuck. If a step proves hard to implement the step thinker can stop indefintely on that step. Like moving up a ladder, if the 6th rung is missing the step thinker may progress no further.
Continued…
Scatter Thinking
Over time I noticed some people I worked with approached problem solving in a radically different way. I will call it for lack of a better term “scatter thinking”. The scatter thinker may break a solution into steps, but feels no constraint to work on them in any particular order. The scatter thinker often hops from one step to another, sometimes not completing a step and often returning to it for revision several times. Scatter thinking has several weaknesses but also some powerful strengths.
Weaknesses
Scatter thinkers often will revisit and rework a step several times. If the project was to make a clay bust, a step thinker might start at the neck and work up, moving on to the chin and jawline, upward toward the ears, mouth and eyes, and finish off with the hairs on the top of the subject’s head. A scatter thinker might work on the left ear, move to the nose, do an eyebrow, go back and fix the ear, move to the lips, go back and fix the left ear again. I am sure you get what I mean. Also scatter thinkers often do not know when they are done and cannot predict when a task will be finished. They hope from place to place, adjusting and reworking until they are happy with the results if ever.
