IUBio

Mentifex Will Be Coding Not Posting

Mentifex Maker of Minds mentifex at scn.org
Fri Apr 24 19:45:43 EST 1998


<a href="http://www.salonmagazine.com"> Salon </a> the
most successful (and still free!) of Web magazines offers
a reader participation forum called "Table Talk" with an area
"Science and Health" where a controversy is raging on the topic:
"Is there a physical LOCATION and description of an idea?"....

Mentifex - 03:55pm Apr 24, 1998 PDT (#17 of 17)
For deep background query "Mentifex" on AltaVista.
   
The AI source code of Mind.forth for robots is being released at      
<a href="http://victoria.tc.ca/~uj797/aisource.html">
Operation Mind.forth of Project Mentifex </a> in Victoria, B.C., and at
<a href="http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/aisource.html">
Project Mentifex </a> (the main Web site in Seattle WA USA).
   
Anyone DUBIOUS about whether or not the Mentifex AI design is on the
right track, needs only to check in periodically on the two Web sites
listed above, which serve as alternating distribution-points for the
public-domain robot AI software.
   
Mind.forth for Robots is simply a streamlined port of the previous
Mentifex AI software "Mind.rexx" which was last released on
sat.26.nov.1994 via the (Amiga only) AmiNet distribution system.  The
release of Mind.rexx in late 1994 led to pressure from the Forth and
robotics communities for reformulation of the AI program in the Forth
programming language so beloved of amateur robot makers.

You will find it especially easy to inspect Mind.forth on the Web
(by following the above links), because a hierarchy of internal HTML
jump-links is being embedded directly within the Mind.forth source
code as the port from 26nov1994 Mind.rexx slowly takes shape.  That is,
you need only visit the Mind.forth site(s), and you may wander up and
down the skeletal "scaffolding" of the Artificial Mind and observe
directly from within the AI just how the mental architecture is being
assembled from the following main Divisions of Mind:
   
( stub ) SLEEP ( calls subroutine DREAM) 
( stub ) EMOTION ( calls subroutine INSTINCT )
         THINK ( calls EXAMINE; will call LANGUAGE )
( stub ) VOLITION ( calls MOTORIUM, thence LOCOMOTION )
         SENSORIUM ( calls AUDITION ).
   
As the port of 26nov1994 Mind.rexx to 1998 Mind.forth slowly gathers
steam, one metric of success in the Mentifex AI project will be the
extent to which amateur robot builders adopt and adapt Mind.forth as
the OS (operating system) for their androids and robots.  Another
metric will of course be the extent to which the AI expressed in
Mind.forth is ported to additional programming languages such as Java,
Visual BASIC, C, C++, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Telescript, Ada, and so
forth.  Please also watch the Usenet newsgroups comp.robotics.misc,
comp.ai and comp.lang.forth for breaking news about Operation
Mind.forth of Project Mentifex (Latin for "Mindmaker").



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