Would be cool if one of the items was a nugget of “computation fuel” that could be used to allow a robot’s register machine to run for extra steps. Or maybe just items whose proximity gives a robot extra computation steps. That way you could illustrate situations involving robots with quantitatively different levels of “intelligence”. Could lead to some interesting strategies if you run programming competitions on this too, like worker robots carrying fuel to a mother brain.
That’s already pretty much possible via the ProcessorItem which have a speed controlling how many computations a robot built with the processor may use. (Robots only get to use one processor, but if you find high-powered processors you can always rebuild a robot using the better processor.)
I was thinking in a similar direction. From a biological perspective, computation seems to be a costly activity—if you just think of the metabolic demand the brain puts on the human being.
I assumed that it is very different with computer, however. I thought that the main cost of computation for computers, nowadays, is in size, rather than energy. I might be wrong, but I assumed that even with laptops the monitor is a significant battery drainer in comparison to the actual computer.
(sorry, mainly thinking out loud. I better read this and related posts more carefully. I’m glad to see the restriction on computations per amount of time, which I thought was unbounded here).
Would be cool if one of the items was a nugget of “computation fuel” that could be used to allow a robot’s register machine to run for extra steps. Or maybe just items whose proximity gives a robot extra computation steps. That way you could illustrate situations involving robots with quantitatively different levels of “intelligence”. Could lead to some interesting strategies if you run programming competitions on this too, like worker robots carrying fuel to a mother brain.
That’s already pretty much possible via the
ProcessorItemwhich have aspeedcontrolling how many computations a robot built with the processor may use. (Robots only get to use one processor, but if you find high-powered processors you can always rebuild a robot using the better processor.)I was thinking in a similar direction. From a biological perspective, computation seems to be a costly activity—if you just think of the metabolic demand the brain puts on the human being. I assumed that it is very different with computer, however. I thought that the main cost of computation for computers, nowadays, is in size, rather than energy. I might be wrong, but I assumed that even with laptops the monitor is a significant battery drainer in comparison to the actual computer. (sorry, mainly thinking out loud. I better read this and related posts more carefully. I’m glad to see the restriction on computations per amount of time, which I thought was unbounded here).