Vehicles

What Hacker News says

1. krannerApr 2026
   For explorations of simple mechanisms like this leading to complex behaviour, Valentino Braitenberg’s book Vehicles is a classic.
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2. ksajDec 2020
   This is pretty interesting. I'm very much looking forward to the results of this study.

   It very much reminds me of (especially in the 90's) comparisons between Artificial Life and Artificial Intelligence. AI is a top-down approach, and ALife is a bottom-up approach. AI is about knowing when and how to react to an input, and ALife is about emerging and evolving traits in response to similar inputs.

   Nowadays only a small subset is typically called ALife, but these days they are routinely used together. Neural Networks are a good example of where both philosophies connect relatively seamlessly.

   Mainly the people who study these things would suggest that AI won't suddenly become self-aware or conscious, but ALife is particularly able to demonstrate emergent traits that look like it is acting on its own accord. When Alife and AI play together, then you increase those odds by a whole lot.

   The subject is a lot "bigger" than this, so keep in mind this is a 1 mile wide, 1 inch deep description only. If you really want to grok ALife in its purest form, I recommend reading Valentino Braitenberg's thought experiment "Vehicles."

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3. neilvAug 2019
   A useful search term the article didn't mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsumption_architecture

   Before you get into that, it's delightful to start with the Braitenberg "Vehicles" book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braitenberg_vehicle

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4. ptrott2017Aug 2019
   My first job out of school nearly 30 years ago was building commercial research autonomous robots. We used a subsumption arch for real time avoidance and path following linked to a reactive planner implemented in C and xlisp for goal directed actions and task execution. While most modern books on robotics skim the history of this area - there are a lot of good ideas from that period of research that can be cheaply revistited. If you know anyone interested in robotics - get them to read Ron's (lisper) three layer architecture paper - its a classic in terms of summarizing previous approaches and it also that provided a foundation for a lot what now drives today's research.

   re: NeilV - Braitenberg "Vehicles" book - enough goodness cannot be said about that book. It seems deceptively simple but its a wonderful place to start thinking about and being inspired to building simple beasties.

   As should Grey walter's wonderful tortoise: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2008/212017945378.html

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5. hexagoncJan 2017
   I would also suggest anyone that is interested in BEAM robotics to take a look at Braitenberg Vehicles[1]. These are simple reflex-based robots that can exhibit complex behaviors due to their interaction with their environment. Originally, they were thought experiments by the psychologist Valentino Braitenberg who showed in his book, Vehicles[2], how one might ascribe complex emotional and mental states to a simple automaton if one only observed its external behavior. For a fascinating earlier example of analog robotics, (and the first example of true autonomous robotics to my knowledge) one has the work of Grey Walter and his "tortoise" robots[3].

   [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braitenberg_vehicle

   [2] https://books.google.com/books?id=7KkUAT_q_sQC (there appears to be excerpts available for free as pdfs)

   [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Grey_Walter

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6. facepalmMar 2016
   You might enjoy the book "Vehicles" by Valentio Braitenberg
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