Lab 4: What is it like to be a robot?
Due Wed. May 1st in class

A simulated robot situated in a colorful world.

Introduction

We will again be using Google colab. This time we will be controlling a simulated robot in a world consisting of several rooms off of a corridor. Your goal will be to try to move the robot through this world to reach the pink box. Follow this link to start the lab. Before you begin working, save a copy of this notebook to your own Google drive.

Analysis

Include two screenshots showing the top-down view of the simulated robot environment. One will show your first try at navigating through the environment to reach the pink box. The other will show a later attempt.

Answer the following questions:

1. Did your ability to take the robot's perspective improve with practice from your first to later attempts? If so, explain how your understanding of the robot's proximal view evolved over time. If not, describe why taking the robot's proximal view is so difficult.
2. At the bottom of page 441 in Nagel's paper, he states that "Whatever may be the status of facts about what it is like to be a human, or a bat, or a Martian, they appear to be facts that embody a particular point of view." Imagine that you were navigating through the hallways of the Science Center to find a brighly colored box. How would your point of view be different from the robot's in the simulated task?
3. In the movie "The Machine that Changed the World: The Thinking Machine" they made the point that perception proved to be much more difficult than AI researchers expected. This in turn led many AI researchers to focus on a disembodied kind of intelligence. On page 147 of the Dreyfus reading, he argues that having a body may be "indispensable for intelligent behavior." What are you thoughts on this issue, is embodiment a key aspect of intelligence?

Bring in a printed copy your analysis to class next week.