Ratslife is a simple robot maze easily constructed using legos/cardboard/wood and is a simple game which is a useful framework for discussing many problems in this book.
In Ratslife, two miniature robots compete on searching for four “feeders” that are hidden in a maze. Once a robot reaches a feeder, it receives “energy” to go on for another 60 seconds, and the feeder becomes temporarily unavailable. After a short while, the feeder becomes available again.
You can construct many different ‘levels’ of robots capable of doing ratslife - with varying degrees of certainty, accuracy, precision, control, etc.
3 examples:
- something as simple as a roomba could probably do it, but might deplete its energy before finding a feeder
- a robot with a proximity sensor (distance from a wall). This robot could follow the wall to its right and explore the entire maze.
- A robot that can identify simple patterns with a camera, distance sensors to avoid walls, and an odometer to track its wheel rotations. With this it could create an internal map of the maze, and calculate the shortest path between feeders and just keep going between them.