kcontrol version 0.4.7

Hybrid control mode

There are three modes of operation for the khepera robot. direct control, cross-compiling and hybrid mode.

You can read more about the three modes of operation of the khepera robot at http://diwww.epfl.ch/lami/robots/K-family/K-family.html#environment.


In hybrid mode the code is split up into two parts. One part takes the actual controller. This part would be cross-compiled and downloaded to run on-chip of the robot. The second part, normally the calculation of the parameters to use by the controller, runs on the host computer. This provides a faster learning speed since the host computer is assumed to have more processing power and it provides faster and smoother runs of the robot since there are no additional delays between the sending of a command and its execution as in direct control mode. The execution of simple controlling tasks on-chip is supposed to be ten times faster than the execution with control over the serial line. For example the control module of the homeokinesis demo runs on-chip within 1 millisecond, the commands to execute the same task in direct control mode take at least 12 millisecond to transfer at 38400 baud.

The hybrid mode is not yet supported within kcontrol since it requires a installed and working cross-compiler. The code of kcontrol has been already redesigned (distributed across C⁺⁺ objects) to easily split it up lateron.

maintained by Thomas Pantzer ,
mailto pantec@aix520.informatik.uni-leipzig.de,
PGP public key available