Welcome to COM1005 Machines and Intelligence¶

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

Introduction¶

This section provides practical materials for the second half of COM1005 Machines and Intelligence (Autumn Semester), which will introduce you to:

MiRo, an animal-like biomimetic companion robot with a brain-based control system.
MiRoCloud, a 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 following 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?!

To complement the weekly lab pages, there are:

The FAQ page with 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 Discussion Board on Blackboard to feed back any issues, questions or comments when using the MiRoCloud simulator or these webpages.