HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ dalek2point3

very cool.

check this out for a modern example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExW_rxKdNJE

For those interested -- people are still interested in building maze solving robots, still called "micromouse". Here is one amazin micromouse that can traverse a maze and remember the solution very, very quickly. These days, its as much a mechanical problem (i.e. building a mouse that is robust, and has accurate sensors) as it is algorithmic.

⬐ prezjordan

I've seen a lot of youtube videos, probably too many. This has to be the most interesting one I have ever watched. I seriously cannot get over this.

How does it move so smoothly?

⬐ fryguy

Some of them can even drift: http://www.iheartrobotics.com/2010/11/micromouse-news-and-vi...

⬐ tripzilch

Oh wow. That is exactly how I imagined the "Rat Things" in Snow Crash to move like :)

(except much faster and bigger, of course)

⬐ codezero

Do you know the rules of the micromouse races? In all the videos I see, the mouse appears to go directly from start to finish without any maze finding going on.

My best guess is that they get earlier runs to "learn" the maze, then go for a speed run, is that right?

⬐ fryguy

Yes, there is a learning phase and a timed run.

⬐ codezero

I am guessing the learning phase plays into the score somehow, otherwise they may as well be pre-programmed, right? It seems unlikely there are mice that would be unable to figure out the mazes at this point.

⬐ artursapek

It looks like there's something of an art to how they handle corners and diagonals. At sub 10 second run times I think the agility is really the hard part of the programming, not the actual maze solving algorithm.

⬐ dalek2point3

yeah, here is the relevant paragraph from the Wikipedia entry:

>The maze is made up of a 16 by 16 grid of cells, each 180 mm square with walls 50 mm high. The mice are completely autonomous robots that must find their way from a predetermined starting position to the central area of the maze unaided. The mouse will need to keep track of where it is, discover walls as it explores, map out the maze and detect when it has reached the goal. Having reached the goal, the mouse will typically perform additional searches of the maze until it has found an optimal route from the start to the center. Once the optimal route has been found, the mouse will run that route in the shortest possible time.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromouse

⬐ iandanforth

I wish he were alive and working today. The fact that Alzheimer's prevented him from seeing the increasingly amazing results of his life's work is one of history's small but powerful tragedies.

⬐ glhaynes

Fantastic video. Even just the sound of Theseus's operation is fun to hear.

"This is a bank of relays: telephone relays."

On a tangential note: just the other day I was having a conversation with a friend who felt that "phone" was an inaccurate and perhaps inappropriately diminutive term for the pocket computers that so many people carry now. I argued contrarily from a language-evolution standpoint, but if I were to find myself in a similar discussion again I think I might instead point toward what a tremendous role telephone systems and the people like Shannon who built them played in the development of what we now call computers. Smartphones are descendants of telephones but they're equally descendants of telephone systems.

⬐ _quasimodo

For people without flashplayer:

  rtmpdump -r 'rtmp://cp262207.edgefcs.net/ondemand/techchannel/10385/videos/OW10002.Claude_Shannon-FL8_550x310_700K' -o Claude_Shannon_Demonstrates_Machine_Learning.flv

⬐ sp332

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPKkXibQXGA I made sure it plays without Flash.

⬐ imrehg

I remember reading about this and his work at Bell in The Idea Factory http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797471-the-idea-factory It's awesome and strange in the same time.

He was basically fooling around "instead of work", creating such amazing things, while all the more people fooling around "instead of work" I see these days are at max creating high scores for Candy Crush...

Lot to learn. :)

⬐ zenbowman

The Idea Factory is a great book, it totally shatters the myths so often propagated today.

It demonstrates without doubt that innovation can happen at a very large scale in very large, monopolistic, noncompetitive organizations. In fact, there's reason to believe that innovation might require a very large organization, because small companies don't have the funds needed to do research, and are likely to be unable to capture the market even if their research does bear fruit.

⬐ gioele

> innovation might require a very large organization,

Like, you know, nations?

⬐ thret

"We must beware of invalid 'implications' in the discussion of nervous systems, brains and machinery. Are there men who would deny the meaning of ethics, of aesthetics, of religion, on the strength of a mechanical tortoise? Absurdly enough, there are." - Stafford Beer, 'Cybernetics and Management' 1959.

⬐ Ecio78

I'm the only one that reading Theseus thought about this: http://continuum.wikia.com/wiki/Julian_Randol ?

⬐ tripzilch

It crossed my mind yes, but the robotic mouse and the TV character were named after the Greek myth for different reasons:

1) Theseus escaped from the Minotaur's Labyrinth, hence a maze-running robot.

2) First paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theseus says:

"""Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were identified with an archaic religious and social order.[2] As Heracles was the Dorian hero, Theseus was a founding hero, considered by Athenians as their own great reformer (...)"""

Which meshes nicely with the Continuum character. Possibly for even more reasons, but I'm not super familiar with the Greek Theseus myth.

⬐ jonstewart

This is fantastic. Why hasn't this been posted before?

⬐ yzzxy

Must have been a tough choice between Theseus and Algernon.

⬐ jonstewart

This was 8–9 years before Flowers for Algernon was published.

⬐ opinali

Old datacenter & cabling porn, too :)

⬐ nickgrosvenor

He's a legend. For further reading on Claude Shannon check out the following books.

Fortune's Formula by William Poundstone (http://goo.gl/VrBMUW)

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick (http://goo.gl/Q5tzCW)

⬐ iandanforth

I also heartily recommend The Information. Such a great book, such a terrible title.

⬐ chockablock

Also some wonderful color on Shannon's early life, career at Bell Labs and in academia in The Idea Factory (a fantastic read for any Hacker News reader).