View Full Version : [Project] Fear Simulator

11-13-2008, 12:26 AM
Hey everyone! This'll be my first post, so I guess I'll introduce myself. I'm Hawk, and I live on beautiful and sunny Western Washington. (Beautiful and sunny... yeah right. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who isn't on SOME sort of antidepressant here. :tongue:) I'm the computer hardware guy. I build and repair computers. :happy:

Now I'm starting to get into robotics. :veryhappy: So for my first project (as suggested - with much persistence - by darkback2) I decided I wouldn't really make a robot so much as a component for PC-based bots.

Sometime last year I had the idea to try and make a fear simulator. I was going to write a program that would "listen" to whatever I typed into a box and come up with a number to represent how terrified of me it was. Darkback2 has gotten me to finally go ahead and make the thing, suggesting I write it in two languages: PD and C++.

I decided on simulating fear over other emotions because of its relative simplicity. Fear is one of our most basic emotions, telling us whether to run or not to run. It can be expressed with a single number.

So once I get this done I guess I'll end up using it in some sort of a larger build... :happy:

11-13-2008, 02:06 AM
Welcome to the forum!

Unless you have a lot of C++ experience and know what you're getting into, a first project of a lexical parser and AI - well - C++ wouldn't be my first choice of language. I'd consider a language more aimed at lexical manipulation.

11-13-2008, 09:13 AM
Thanks ^^. C++ is da bomb. :tongue: That's definitely what I'm going to use.

11-13-2008, 10:42 AM

Myself, I like using a hammer to drive nails and a screw driver to drive screws, but hey, any port in a storm! :)

11-13-2008, 06:38 PM
I'd be interesting in parsing language myself. What sort of computer languages/scripting modules are out there for linux?

11-13-2008, 07:00 PM
Today, probably Python. Maybe Prolog, maybe Lisp (or scheme). But probably Python.

Although [cringe] you could get a BIG head-start by going with java and looking at OpenNLP...

[edit to add:] http://opennlp.sourceforge.net/projects.html Opensource Natural Language Parsing

11-13-2008, 10:48 PM
If you're using linux then Python is probably the best bet. It has a ton of features that makes string parsing and manipulation pretty simple.


11-14-2008, 10:38 AM
Well, I've heard python is pretty useful to learn for linux users. I wonder if it would be a better overall language for an AI system (currently using C because I can talk to both the serial port and get camera data).

11-14-2008, 12:41 PM
Not sure about python being "better for AI"... but pySerial (http://pyserial.wiki.sourceforge.net/pySerial) provides probably the easiest serial port access I have ever seen. As to camera interfacing, thats a little harder, as it will depend on OS. I know there was a really good frame grabber for windows, but I had a hard time doing the same under linux (I haven't looked at in a while, but will be soon).


11-14-2008, 10:29 PM
Naw, Linux is even easier than Windows to get frame buffers from.

Either you somehow missed it, or you were poking at it in the mid 1990's. :)