(2024-02-06, 02:16 AM)seandepagnier Wrote: I explained it.
You said " If the AI is entirely meant to mimic a better response at the helm than your current software by learning how a human would steer it" This is wrong. It is not meant to learn from a human. Humans are not that smart anyway. It is meant to learn how the boat will react given potential rudder movements. That is what it learns. From the ability to predict the future motion of the boat it can decide which movement is best. For this, rudder feedback is optional. Rudder feedback would actually also be optional even if it were mimicking a human's relative rudder adjustments as well but doing this will limit you to the ability of a human and more importantly you wont have much training data unless you do lots of hand steering.
Didn't mean to get your hackles up.
Please understand that I have a great deal of respect for you and what you have done with PyPilot. Even with my limited exposure (and no hands-on with it yet) it seems obvious, it surpasses many of the big-buck versions already. In fact, it appears to me that some of those have either (legally) reverse engineered it or (illegally) copied and used pieces of your code... because it was better. Any competent engineer can design a fighter jet with the modern, limitless budget of compute time, unit testing, and checks and balances. It takes a great genius to build a Wright Flyer with bailing wire, chewing gum and duct tape and then... go fly it. Your videos clearly show you are in the latter group.
With your line of thought (where it mainly learns the dynamics of the boat based on your PyPilot controlling it) it will only learn to mimic that of PyPilot. IOW, never surpassing it. With the added risk of other boats influences in the Neural Network might cause a contrasting and harmful edge cases.
IMO. The only case where the potential advantages outweighs the unknown (and hidden numerical) risks is where it ONLY learns from a professional racer and only on their one boat and only used for racing conditions. And only in that deep-pocket, cutting-edge case where the boat can be instrumented with rudder position and all sail position settings (the other choices the pro racer has control over). Only then to be used to relieve the racer when the second-string (or no) human helmsmen are available.
And more... IMO. I think PyPilot would benefit with you using your core strengths and applying your genius to extending it by controlling electric:
- furling headsails
- in-mast furled mains
- sheeting lines
- boom vangs
Depending on your bent, you could continue to Open Source and continue earning the love and admiration of the world... or monetizing a product and live comfortably (actually extravagantly). Empowering the Boomers age group (and future generations) to continue sailing into their 70's, 80's and 90's will open many well-healed purses! Then again... with Google and others paying high 6 (near 7) figure salaries for AI experience, you may be able to leverage that for your own personal gain.
Either way - I look forward to see what you come up with. You are the expert. It is your program, so you can do with it as you wish. What do I know... I don't have a crystal ball. I only have 40 years as a C++ developer and aerospace engineer specializing in finite-element analysis, dynamic systems, and frequency response - aka... the Competent Engineer.