MBX-1 (Mammalian Brain Experiment #1)

I have a theory that I've been working on for over 25 years now.  It's about making robots smarter by making them more aware of their surroundings.  To make them more aware, they need sensors and artificial emotions or feelings to interpret them.

MBX was a boiled down, bare-bones, first attempt at this. The whole program fits in one slot on the basic stamp2sx chip. (There's 2 in the pics, but only 1 was connected) 

When started, the robot knows nothing and moves randomly.  There's 6 motor outputs in can choose: (forward, backward, left forward, right forward, left backward, right backward).

It can detect obstacles with IR kit but, that information doesn't mean anything to it yet. (0 = all clear, 1 = obstacle on right, 2 = obstacle on left, 3= obstacle on both sides).  And it has bumper switches on all 4 corners, that are in parallel and use only 1 I/O line.

It will eventually hit something.  When it does, it will remember what it was doing (motor output) and what it was detecting (0,1,2, or 3).  It'll combine this data on a "list of things that caused crashes," or what I call Pain Memory.

It will then do another random motor output and hopefully move on.

While it's moving around, it constantly checks what it's doing and detecting against the Pain Memory to see if it encounted this situatioin before.  If so, it'll do another random motor output- before the collision takes place.

You can say, the robot  learns to avoid collisions by anticipating situations that caused it "pain" before.  And the anticipation of pain is a pretty good definition of "fear."