Initially, I decided to work in Python, because I know there are good resources for machine learning and natural language processing, and it’s meant to be good for prototyping.
The only problem with that is, though I’ve played with Python a bit in the past, I’m not familiar with the language. So my first sessions were a frustrating exercise in getting nowhere slowly, with lots of Googling for examples and tutorials.
I decided to switch back to what I know well, which is Java and Eclipse, and that’s what I’ll use for the first experiment, which is Bug World.
Bug World is a very simple exercise which allows explorations of the concepts of sense data, actions, and goals. The ‘brain’ in this case is minimal, but the basic architecture should be transferrable to be more complex projects.
Working Models of a Brain 