wall follower

wall follower

(robotics)A person or algorithm that compensates for lackof sophistication or native stupidity by efficiently followingsome simple procedure shown to have been effective in thepast. Used of an algorithm, this is not necessarilypejorative; it recalls "Harvey Wallbanger", the winning robotin an early AI contest (named, of course, after the cocktail).Harvey successfully solved mazes by keeping a "finger" on onewall and running till it came out the other end. This wasinelegant, but it was mathematically guaranteed to work onsimply-connected mazes - and, in fact, Harvey outperformedmore sophisticated robots that tried to "learn" each maze bybuilding an internal representation of it. Used of humans,the term *is* pejorative and implies an uncreative,bureaucratic, by-the-book mentality.

See also code grinder.