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SPRING 07 ARCHIVE Homework
Assignment 7
This week we've moved from our underwater environment to a
sunny green meadow with a yellow 'bee' foraging on orange and
blue flowers. The nectar (energy) levels obtained from the flowers
vary with time. Your goal is to develop a controller that
allows the bee to forage efficiently in this changing
environment. Its little bee brain will need some form of
learning and memory to associate flower color with energy level.
New features this week
- flowers - come in two colors: orange and blue.
Energy levels vary with time and are either +5 (nutritious)
or -5 (toxic). Nutritious flowers are displayed in brighter
colors and toxic flowers are displayed in darker colors.
At the start of the simulation, blue flowers are nutritious
and orange flowers are toxic.
- flower sensors - rather than 'food' and 'toxin' sensors,
the bees have 'orange' and 'blue' sensors. As before, the
intensity of the stimulus varies with distance from the flower.
The bee cannot 'see' the difference between a nutritious blue flower
and a toxic blue flower. Blue flowers always appear the same to
the bee, even though they are drawn differently on the screen.
(The bright and dark colors on the screen are to help
you see if your bee is making good choices.)
- other sensors - the bee has 'energy' and 'wall' sensors
that may be useful. (The bee also has 'light' and 'temperature'
sensors, but these remain constant throughout the simulation.)
- depleted flowers - After feeding, the nectar level of
the flower drops to zero for a few seconds before being replenished.
A depleted flower is shown as as gray on the screen, but the bee still
sees it with the original orange or blue color
(i.e., a bee can't tell if a flower is depleted just by looking at it).
Depleted flowers provide 0 energy.
- feeding - the bee needs to have its mouth open in
order to feed ('mouth open' is equivalent to 'proboscis extended').
- reproduction - the bee doesn't reproduce (remember only the
queen bee lays eggs). In the simulation the bee changes size
to reflect its energy level, which you can think of as the amount
of 'nectar' that its carrying.
- automatic termination -
the simulation will stop automatically at t = 120 s.
To carry out this week's homework assignment, you'll need to:
- follow the instructions and answer the questions in
hw07.txt
- download hw07.zip to your matlab
directory and unzip into a hw07 subdirectory.
After answering all of the homework questions,
email your responses
to mcb419 at gmail.com with hw07 in the subject header.
Homework 7 is due by midnight on Tuesday, Apr 3.
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