This is an image of the initial flowchart for the robot's "OS". Instincts will be a list of basic actions such as moving an arm 10 degrees (I am going to put them in 10 degree increments at first for each motion), or saying a word from a known word list. The flowchart below is not all inclusive, but was a rough outline to give some direction for the code. There will also be some housekeeping functions such as updating mood on a success or failure.

I know this is a very simplistic learning system, but hey, we all have to start somewhere :) To handle the "nothing is subtracted" during optimization, I was simply going to add 1 to the random number generation. This way, if there are 15 elements in the array, and a 16 is rolled, then nothing is subtracted.

The situation file will be of a standard text file format, very human readable.

<situation number> <worked more than once> <sensor 1 status> <sensor 2 status> <sensor 3/etc status> <comma separated list of instinct numbers in array>

The instinct list will include things like

<instinct number> <sub system designation number (servo, voice, etc)> <actions to send to that device in a command string>

All actions are sent over and received by a standard serial communication. This is to make things easier to monitor and keep everything the same should I need to troubleshoot. The system can control 32 servos and has a number of other GPIO pins that can be addressed in this way.