As Plastic Dinosaur has wandered around the large warehouse space it would call home if it had that concept, it's been learning as it observes the mobile bipeds it shares the space with. They are more nimble, erect and noisy than it is, for now. As it dreams, it has started to recognize a pattern. When these bipeds reach out with their upper limbs and touch things, the environment changes in ways it's curious about. It learns to pay more attention to what human hands touch.

Plastic Dinosaur approached the irregularly shaped object, a platform with four stems reaching to the floor with a projection upward in the rear. He was skittish as he approached, not knowing what it was, his amygdalanet sending out warnings while curiousnet sent out its desire to approach. It didn't react or move or make noise, so he sniffed it, nudged it and then walked away to charge. Plastic Dinosaur approached the irregularly shaped object, a platform with four stems reaching to the floor with a projection upward on the right. He was skittish as he approached, not knowing what it was, his amygdalanet sending out warnings while curiousnet sent out its desire to approach.

Plastic Dinosaur's normal living space is a big warehouse with a lot of interesting features for it to clamber over and peer behind. But it's noticed that the bipeds he shares the space with come and go through parts of the barriers that contain him. He's noticed that they can swing part of the barrier open, pass through the opening and then the barrier closes behind them. He's seen space behind the barriers that he hasn't explored. Plastic Dinosaur wanders over to the door, peering at things as he goes to see if anything more interesting shows up.

On screen, the grey skinned velociraptor twitches and spasms, trying to hurl itself to its feet under the command to rise. A thousand parallel iterations live in their simple digital worlds, trying to find a path to standing up. One manages, briefly, then collapses again. Hundreds of the iterations are abandoned, and the ones that were closest spawned again into a thousand dreams of a standing robotic dinosaur. Eventually, one succeeds in lunging to its feet and staying erect. The neural net that learned to stand survives. The rest disappear into the ether. This article continues the exploration that David Clement and I are making into machine learning via Plastic Dinosaur, a robotic velociraptor guided by neural nets. It's a fictional exercise to introduce and play with concepts of robotics and machine learning, and to explore aspects of where machine learning is today.

On screen, the grey skinned velociraptor twitches and spasms, trying to hurl itself to its feet under the command to rise. A thousand parallel iterations live in their simple digital worlds, trying to find a path to standing up. One manages, briefly, then collapses again. Hundreds of the iterations are abandoned, and the ones that were closest spawned again into a thousand dreams of a standing robotic dinosaur. Eventually, one succeeds in lunging to its feet and staying erect. The neural net that learned to stand survives. The rest disappear into the ether. This article continues the exploration that David Clement and I are making into machine learning via Plastic Dinosaur, a robotic velociraptor guided by neural nets. It's a fictional exercise to introduce and play with concepts of robotics and machine learning, and to explore aspects of where machine learning is today.