After competing in an AI contest a few years back, I had fun and wanted to do more, but ran into the problem you describe. The state of hobbyist robotics is ve

After competing in an AI contest a few years back, I had fun and wanted to do more, but ran into the problem you describe. The state of hobbyist robotics is very hardware-centric. I not yet discovered something appropriate for use by AI programmers. So I decided to step back and work on theory. I did this for several years and recently finished. Hobbyist robots still aren't ready to implement my ideas so now what do I do? I started working on a software architecture based on my high-level research. But how to test it? So now I am working on software to simulate an environment for my AI to interact with because I don't have the time or skill to build a real robot. I honestly don't think this is a bad thing because I would imagine that when we start to work on "real" AI (not this nonsense that passes for it today) testing behaviors in a simulated environment before deployment to hardware would save a huge amount of time (and physical damage.) Now I am hoping that once I have taken my virtual habitat as far as it can go, hardware will be available for me to apply what I have been working on. My hopes are low.