Welcome to COM1005 Machines and Intelligence¶

A picture of MiRo in one of the first labs back in 2019

Introduction¶

This section of the website contains the material for the practical sessions of the second half of COM1005 Machines and Intelligence (Autumn Semester).

The teaching material is given in the form of tutorials, with the following aims:

Introduce you to MiRo, an animal-like biomimetic companion robot with a brain-based control system.
Introduce you to the MiRoCloud simulation platform and MiRoCODE, a user-friendly visual coding language for programming MiRo robots.

Structure¶

The tutorials are roughly organised by academic weeks. The first tutorial is titled, rather unsurprisingly, Getting started with MiRoCloud and its purpose is to get you acquainted with the interface and show you how to create simple programs with MiRoCODE blocks.

Then, in the next five weeks you will look at all the various types of blocks available and utilise some of the functionality MiRo has to offer to build progressively more complicated programs.

Once you're comfortable with working in the simulator, you will get a chance to program an actual MiRo robot, using exactly the same setup. The only difference will be clicking the "Play on the robot" button as opposed to "Play in the simulator". How cool is that?!

Must Read¶

To complement the weekly lab pages, there are also two other pages that you should regularly consult:

The Blocks Overview page contains block descriptions and usage examples.
The FAQ page contains the most common quirks and issues you might run into, as well as some examples of best practice. You're advised to read that page carefully and check back regularly to avoid any frustrating situations!

Feedback¶

These pages are being actively developed.
Your help in making them better is deeply appreciated! Please use the COM1005 Semester 1: Practicals Discussion Board to feedback any issues, questions or comments when using the MiRoCloud simulator and these webpages.