Valentino is a study in how simple rules create complex behavior, and it’s the project where my work with the Powder of Life framework began. It was the first piece I built using this modular, bolted-together hardware style—the same grid system I’ve since used for Tony, Kendrick, Gilbert, and Ollie. For me, Powder of Life is the whole ecosystem: the physical components as much as the logic.
The name is a direct nod to Valentino Braitenberg — specifically "Vehicle 2" from his book, Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology. Braitenberg’s thought experiments showed how little logic you actually need to simulate what looks like intent, and he really burned those concepts into my brain. Along with Braitenberg, Valentino is influenced by builders like William Grey Walter, who brought the first robotic "turtles" to life, and Mark Tilden, who proved that simple, four-neuron architectures are often more robust than complicated ones. Like them, I’m interested in the "why" of building—the idea that behavior doesn't require complexity. I don’t treat Valentino like a lab specimen; it’s a working machine. I like to take it out into real environments, like woodshops or gravel paths, and just let it navigate. It doesn’t have a complex brain—it just reacts to the world through a direct loop between its ultrasonic sensors and its wheels.
The most rewarding part of the project is watching how people react to it. Even though Valentino is just following a few basic feedback loops, people immediately start to anthropomorphize it. When it hits a dead end, they’ll say, "Oh, he’s confused" or "He’s trying to figure it out." It’s an exploration into that "mechanistic magic"—that threshold where a simple machine starts to feel like a character with its own internal state.
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