For Maarten's course on Artificial Intelligence we read a section of the book Vehicles, by Valentino Braitenberg (1984). In this book, Braitenberg gives examples of agents performing complex behavior resulting out of very simple interactions with the environment. Inspired by this book and out of general curiosity, I created a very simple version of one of these vehicles. It has two 'eyes' and two 'legs'. It senses the amount of light in its environment and responses with a certain movement: towards, or away from the light. Firstly, what I found out to be interesting is that due to the construction it has some unpredictability in its movement, it seems to 'struggle'. Secondly, due to this unpredictability and struggling it is perhaps more easy to project intention to the vehicle or attribute animal-like qualities to it than in the more 'efficient' movements described by Breitenberg. Thirdly, its 'brain' is completely analog, no computer, Arduino etc. involved. It consists of just a few electronic components, keeping in spirit with the idea of a very simple system that produces complicated outcomes.
Some Photo's
What could be interesting, is to have more of these little 'creatures' in a space and see how they react differently, according to their position, or have the audience shine light on them for example. Or perhaps give them different sensors. A nice example of a similar work is by Dutch Artist Felix Hess, in which he made a group of little machines which move and produce sound in response to the sound of other machines and the sounds in the space: