Introduction

I finally tested the second of my Lego Mindstorms projects and created a video that I posted on YouTube. The robot runs a very basic program and I was wondering how to best describe the capabilities of the software that makes the robot tick. How would a human be able to compare the intelligence of robots?

Figure 1: Lego Mindstorms NXT development environment

Robot, tell me! How smart are you?

Measuring smartness will ultimately lead to a discussion about the definition of intelligence. Maybe instead of determining the smartness of a specific robot, it would make more sense to find out how useful a robot is. 

Watch me picking up a ball!

I fairly straight forward way to demonstrate usefulness is to watch the robot performing a typical task.

Look at my function block chart in LabView!

Another way to describe the robot's functions is to look at its program description. Texas Instruments provided its LabView tool to Lego for programming the NXT micro controller. Clicking on any overview item will display its underlying function block configuration. This is a very visual way to discover robot capabilities.

Summary

These are some basic ideas about sharing and comparing robot capabilities. This is just a start. It would be nice, if there would be a standardized and easy way to compare robots. I continue looking into it. I am thinking about evaluating the Microsoft Robotics Studio and other Lego Mindstorms programming environments. Here is a nice overview of Lego programming.