RatCog Download

Description:

About RatCog:

RatCog is a rat maze simulation tool with plugin "rat brains". It provides a maze window with a spoke-type or radial-maze, and also a performance monitor window that enables continuous display of conditions or performance variables of the rat plugin.

This is an academic research project designed to assist researchers in modeling rats running on mazes before or after their experiments. Two kinds of plugins are supported: Rat plugins and experimenter plugins. The rat plugins control the behavior of the simulated rat. The experimenter plugins control the procedure. For example, the experimenter baits the maze with food, opens doors on the maze, and stores performance records in the database.

See the web site for papers published on RatCog.

Feedback is greatly appreciated. The Plugin API is given in the headers RatPlugin.h and ExperimenterPlugin.h. Please write plugins!

Source code is distributed for the plugins.

Distribution is unlimited, but copyright is retained by Regents of the University of Minnesota Duluth.

... And remember: our programs don't have bugs in them, they have rats in them!


Details about this version:

* Plugin API's have been enhanced, which should eliminate the occurrence of a deadlock condition arising in some experimenter/rat combinations. The new API's remove explicit message passing from the plugin writer and instead provide an event driven interface. The plugin writer now redeclares & overrides PLUGIN_ virtual functions to implement the plugins.
* For convenience, all primitive experimenter functions are named with EXP_, and all primitive rat functions are named RAT_
* The experimenter has access to detecting when the rat moved and when the rat ate food in two event driven ways. He can either have a PLUGIN_ function called or he can explicitly wait for particular kinds of events.
* The GUI now polls the environment at regular intervals for updates. The environment no longer sends messages to the GUI to tell it that the environment has changed. Calls are provided on the environment interface to detect whether environment changes have occurred relevant to the GUI display.
* New plugins: Identity match experimenter and rat. See documentation in code for plugins to see what they do!

Submitted On:

15 Jan 2001

Submitted By:

Karl vom Dorff (karl)

Submitted On:

06 Oct 2008

File Size:

890.51 Kb

Downloads:

42

License:

Artistic License

File Version:

1.5

File Author:

ratcog

Rating:

Total Votes:0

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