Msc2G7:Expert4
Control
System and Control
The design of System and Control will mainly take place in the fourth Quarter.
low tech - micro controller
Microchips are little control units designed to process. They have no processing power for complex calculations but are cheap and fast in their operation field.
The main point of this microcontroller approach is to keep the elements light. (The elements exist each of a knot or ‘joint’ and a beam/rod.) The term light refers to light in weight but especially light in intelligence. The advantage is that light is cheap. Which means the number of elements is easy to scale. The power of this approach is to give the elements the lowest intelligence as possible and to gain synergy from all light elements. That way the goal is achieved rather by quantity than quality. Than cooperation has became a way not an objective.
Electronic dimensioning To engineer a light element the level of intelligence and programming must be kept simple. That implies no complicated calculations of the complete structure. Just design electronic features that are needed. In the perspective of seeing the whole structure as the synergy of the separate elements it is logical to dimension the intelligence of the elements accordingly to the fraction of their size compared to the assembly. On a higher abstraction level could be stated that every higher level of intelligence on one element has unused potential. As a law of nature demands everything is dropping to its lowest potential.
Reach set point
This approach of control is using the operation method of a servo; putting power on the motor till it moves to the set point using the feedback of the potentiometer. Basically the microcontroller will do the same: if the servos of the own joint will not be able to reach the set point than the neighbour joint will have to power his servos as well till they will be able to do that together.
Local control Hand in hand with simple intelligence and programming is simple communication. Bypassing all to all communication helps slimming down the system. Only neighbours have to communicate i.e. each one to the right and to the left. The only important conversations they have to maintain is the call for help if the set point will not be reached. In this manner the neighbours together make the neighbourhood without overall control.
Roderick Kroes
