My eventual goal is to create a few machine object classes for use with either the Arduino or Processing or both. In general, machine learning involves processor intensive statistical calculations on very large data sets to be effective. Obviously this does not lend itself well for use on a small 8-bit microcontroller platform like Arduino. However, I believe it may be possible to do some very neat things with an Arduino based system if most of the “training” phase of a given algorithm is performed on a PC with Processing, while the implementation/reinforcement learning phase is conducted on the Arduino. If input data is limited to analog/digital sensor readings, a very simple open-source robot with the ability to learn may be possible.

I plan to do my best to implement some form of decision tree (supervised learning), Q-learning (reinforcement learning) and K-nearest neighbors (unsupervised learning) algorithms, starting with the decision tree.

To begin with I plan to design/test my algorithms with Matlab to speed development, then translate the code into either Processing or Arduino as the case may warrant.