Notes on robotics, vision, and systems.
An important concept in programming is modularity, which means dividing a program into several blocks so that modifying one block does not affect the others. In LabVIEW, we use subVIs to implement modular programming.
The two-dimensional Picture control provides pixel-level control and can create almost any graphical object. To display an image in a two-dimensional Picture control, you must write an image to the control programmatically. You can draw with the Picture Functions VIs.
A shift register passes the value generated in the previous loop iteration to the next iteration. Shift registers appear as pairs of terminals located at corresponding positions on the borders on opposite sides of a loop. A shift register must be initialized; that is, you must set the value that it passes to the first loop iteration.
Eigen is an open-source C++ linear algebra library that provides fast matrix and linear algebra operations, equation solving, and other features. Many higher-level software libraries also use Eigen for matrix operations. Eigen is a header-only library, so to use it, you only need to include its header files; no library linking is required.
The rotation and translation between two coordinate frames are collectively called the transformation between frames. While a robot moves, we often define an inertial frame (the world frame), which can be treated as fixed. The robot itself is a moving frame.
Generating a surface of revolution such as a vase essentially involves sweeping a profile along a guide curve. For a vase, the method is to sweep a circle along a curve. The circle is generated as follows: the total number of loop iterations is 360, corresponding to 360 degrees, while i represents each angle from 0~360.
A for loop runs for a fixed number of iterations and also has a conditional terminal that can terminate a while loop early, equivalent to the break statement in C. For loops are closely tied to array operations, and their most important function is processing array data.
The components used include a simulated power supply, a transformer, a bridge rectifier, a non-polarized capacitor, an electrolytic capacitor, and a three-terminal voltage regulator IC. The wiring method is shown in the figure.
For a mobile robot, we often need it to know two things—where it is (localization) and what the surrounding environment looks like (mapping).
An element can move freely within a box and overlap other boxes. When the window is scrolled, some modules stay fixed at a certain position on the screen. Neither of these effects can be achieved quickly with standard flow or floats alone; positioning is needed in those cases.
