Vehicle 3
Love
Vehicle 3 changes the sign of the coupling. The vehicle is no longer excited by the signal. It is inhibited by it. That small reversal is enough to make one wiring pattern look tender and another look exploratory.
10 min read
Vehicle 2 made the body look emotional by deciding where to turn. Vehicle 3 adds a second twist: stronger signal no longer means more speed. It means less. As the light grows stronger, the motors slow down.
Once again, the interpretive jump is immediate. A vehicle that turns toward the source and then slows to a stop beside it looks attached. A vehicle that turns away whenever the source grows too strong but regains speed as it leaves looks restless, picky, or exploratory. The behavior feels richer than the mechanism because the slowing matters as much as the steering.
Key idea
Love in Braitenberg's sense is not a feeling hidden inside the machine. It is the visible consequence of inhibitory coupling: the vehicle turns toward what it likes, then loses speed as it arrives.
Approach plus braking looks like attachment
With direct inhibitory wiring, the brighter side slows its own wheel first. That turns the body toward the source. But the same mechanism also reduces overall speed as both sensors saturate. The result is a trajectory that approaches and then settles.
Cross the same inhibitory wires and the story changes. Now the body peels away from strong signal, speeds back up as the light weakens, and ends up roaming. The field is the same. The body is the same. The only real change is which wheel gets slowed.
Love
Direct inhibition turns inward and slows as the light grows stronger, so the vehicle settles near the source.
Direct inhibition makes the brighter side slow first, so the body turns inward and loses speed as it arrives.
Explorer
Crossed inhibition turns outward when the signal is strong, so the vehicle keeps leaving the source and finding it again.
Crossed inhibition makes the brighter side spare its own wheel, so the body peels away and regains speed as the signal weakens.
Love is geometry with damping
The crucial addition here is braking. In Vehicle 2, closing in on the source often made the aggressive vehicle feel more intense because it sped up on the way in. In Vehicle 3, closing in makes the loving vehicle gentler because it loses speed on the way in.
That change is enough to make the motion look selective or even affectionate. But the right explanation is still mechanical. The source is not desired in any rich sense. It is simply the place where the turning and the slowing happen to reinforce each other.
Love
The field stays fixed while the inhibitory routing changes. One crossover is enough to turn attachment into wandering.
Modern translation
Systems often look more intentional when inhibition enters the loop. Slowing, pausing, lingering, and withholding action are easy for observers to read as judgment or attachment, even when they are just consequences of how strong signals suppress output.
The environment still co-authors the behavior
The field still matters because it shapes where slowing begins and how sharply the path bends. Move the source and the loving vehicle settles somewhere else. Move it again and the explorer begins wandering along a different orbit.
Drag the light across the plate below. Try both modes in the same location. The contrast is clearest when the geometry is held constant: one vehicle keeps trying to stay with the source, while the other keeps finding reasons to leave it.
Love
Drag the light around the plate. The loving vehicle keeps trying to settle near it, while the explorer keeps slipping away.
Open plate
The full plate stays small on purpose: one source, two sensors, two motors, inhibitory coupling, and a few tunable parameters. That is enough to produce motion that people quickly describe in relational language.
Use the controls to tune gain and field strength, switch between the two wiring schemes, and move the source around. The lesson stays the same. Attachment, selectivity, and curiosity can all begin as local dynamics long before they deserve a larger psychological story.
Love
Open the full plate: wiring, source position, field strength, gain, trail, and reset.