Gee I think 3 GHz. is plenty fast enough for most control applications that come readily to mind. How exactly is that too slow for your tastes?

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We never have time to do it right; but we always have time to do it over.

 

I like it!

Hey now. Never discredit the old timers. Man some of them were shear geniuses!

I always flip out when I think of how Single Sideband was actually invented. Some guy sat down and figured out this phasing array using at least a hundred diodes and capacitors to actually phase out the carrier and one sideband...lol.

These guys were nuts!

 

Oh, my picture didn't come out on your centrifugal doo-hicky.

Trust me. We always want faster faster faster. Real time! Robotics will demand it. I am certain.

 

Anyway that coil arrangement that Jpanhalt came up with is fascinating! A while back I had got into a discussion with a really smart guy on another electronics board. He had built a balancing mechanism into a two wheeled robot. Well he was successful but the way he went about it just seemed like too much of an over kill. It disturbed me. He used a neat transducer which I had not thought of, an "inverted pendulum". But then the movement of the pendulum device was converted into data and run through a software "Kalman" filter. This data was used to control the motors needed to correct the slight variations for balance.

I felt this was very slow and demanded too much processor time and effort. I always look at the man for robotic features. The man uses what, the brain stem for balance I believe. Not the brain itself. Kind of like reflexes where your hand will yank back from a hot pan or something and later you feel the pain (reflex). There is less processing required and a shorter path in the circuitry so to speak. Brain stem to spinal cord to fingers and back.

I think this coil mechanism is ideal for such an application. The inverted pendulum could be mounted to the coil arrangement and the motors could respond directly to the movement of the coils. The accuracy is not even an issue because balance is always in motion and constantly correcting itself. You do not want a processor (brain) to constantly be preoccupied with the balancing process. If it were that way for the man, we would not be able to think. Most people cannot walk and chew gum at the same time (a figure of speech). What do you think? Anybody? Does anyone think we should keep the Kalman filter? Interested in hearing your argument.