“Nobody cares!”

Was my younger brother’s response to my incessant blabber about “forking winning combos” in Connect 4. 

When “Create Smart AI Games with Javascript” popped up in my youtube recommendations, I realized that there was someone sitting on my desk all along who would listen to my connect 4 strategies without a yawn.

Now, communicating with a computer wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. So, I decided to start small.

Using an algorithm called “Minimax”, I trained it to play the game which we’ve all played alongside doodles at the back of our notebooks: TicTacToe. Not only did it listen to everything I said but it also never succumbed to a defeat.

https://aryaman175.github.io/TicTacToe/

Convinced that I would find the right person to discuss my game plans with, I began teaching it to connect 4. The wonderful part though, was after giving it an initial nudge it started to think independently and develop its own ideas. Eventually, it garnered the intelligence to beat its very own teacher.

https://aryaman175.github.io/Connect4/

Impressed by the bond it formed with this device, I began to explore.

Using “Heuristic” algorithms I taught it to solve the “8 puzzle” problem, a childhood pastime, in the most efficient manner.

I even trained it to find the shortest distance between 2 points and traverse mazes using the “A* Algorithm”, akin to the working of Google Maps.

https://aryaman175.github.io/AI_8Puzzle/
https://aryaman175.github.io/PathFinder/

While such ventures continued, I felt a burning urge to give my projects some life, to make them more than just a mass of pixels. 

I gathered a bunch of batteries and pulled out some wires from worn out devices before connecting them to an “Arduino”, a simple computer the size of your palm. I even attached 3 sonar sensors and used a little mathematical formula that enabled the gadget to calculate the distance between nearby objects.

Voila! A self driving car was born.

In such a way I spent my hours at home exploring a hobby which I discovered through a youtube video

How Gen Z of me! 

Posted by CMRNPUC

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