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Subject: 
Re: FW: Something else is needed, I think...
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Tue, 4 May 1999 18:43:29 GMT
Original-From: 
John A. Tamplin <jat@liveonthenet.com%stopspam%>
Viewed: 
883 times
  
On Tue, 4 May 1999, Kekoa Proudfoot wrote:

- Floating point is not optional. You may reduce the precision to a few
bits, or do a few hacks instead of a full blown floating point support,
but we definitely need some sort of floating point. If you want a bot
that keeps track of it's position, you need it (you also need at least a
sin() function/lookup table). Just one example.

My take on this is that you can use fixed point if you really need extra
decimal places.  That is, work in fractions, not whole numbers.

Remember that a floating point number is still stored as "integers" in RAM
and simply represents m*2^e where m is the mantissa and e is the exponent.
FP is useful when you need to represent a wide range of values, since you
can have 24 bits of precision located anywhere throughout the range (in
IEEE 32-bit floats).  If you need precision in a range that doesn't vary
much, using fixed-point math is superior since you aren't wasting bits
on the exponent.  Ie, treat your 32-bit integer as having a decimal after
16 bits.

Providing sin() is difficult because of the tradeoff between memory usage
and usability.  My thoughts are that the cost of memory usage outweighs the
benefit of having the functions available for the few (?) that will use
them.

It depends on the resolution required.  A sin() table with quarter-degree
resolution is under 700 bytes (store 0-45 and compute the others from that
value).  Computing sin() on the fly doesn't take much space, but takes time
(typically about 12 multiply/adds depending on the approximation).

John A. Tamplin Traveller Information Services
jat@LiveOnTheNet.COM 2104 West Ferry Way
256/705-7007 - FAX 256/705-7100 Huntsville, AL 35801

--
Did you check the web site first?: http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: FW: Something else is needed, I think...
 
(...) Do you mean, when a timer reaches a certain value, run a specified task? Can't you do this already, or is something broken with the current firmware in this regard? (It seem that some combination of wait and start_task should do the trick, (...) (25 years ago, 4-May-99, to lugnet.robotics)

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