I'm currently reading the rather excellent book called "Why does E = mc^2?" (The ^ sign should denotes exponential - I am writing this on my phone and it unfortunately doesn't do superscript.
Going through the chapter where the authors, Professor Brian Cox and Professor Jeff Forshaw are describing how to obtain a spacetime velocity vector.
While paddling through the mathematics like a confused gundog searching for a ninja duck in the weeds, my mind started wondering about that famous two slit experiment where it was found that the act of observing a photon's behaviour, changed it's behaviour.
In other words, if you look at a photon, you lose the ability to predict where it will go, and vice versa.
I think Terry Pratchett calls them inspirons, little particles of inspiration which fly around till they hit a receptive neuron.
One of those hit me and made me wonder.
This is probably utterly wrong.
We, humans, are three dimensional creatures with an imperfect perception of a fourth dimension, time. Don't believe me? Show me a hypercube. Not its shadow, I want to see the real deal.
It can't be done.
In the book mentioned above, Cox and Forshaw show that in order to absolutely describe an object's position, we use a vector which essentially contains representations of the coordinates of an object, as well as an added time descriptor.
That's an imperfect description, but it will do.
At the risk of sounding like I am anthropomorphicising photons, if we are four dimensional massive objects with a limited perception of the time ldimension, is it possible photons are three dimensional massless objects with a limited existence on four dimensions?
The energy of an object equals mass times the speed of light squared, but photons are massless particles which have the velocity c.
Following from that (this is shaky for me) if an object has no mass, it exists as a point in spacetime, giving it three dimensions. A point has an x dimension, a y dimension and a time dimension.
Not really much point to this post except to pour this out. If anyone spots and flaw in all this, feel free to correct me. I would prefer to be educated rather than wrong.
Monday 21 February 2011
Sunday 13 February 2011
I havent forgotten about this place!
Yes, I know its been a while since I've posted, but rest assured gentle reader, I haven't forgotten about you. I have simply been snowed under with other stuff and havent had a chance to write about what I've been doing with the robot.
What I've been doing is sort of not much, although there has been a little bit of action.
I was paid a week ago and to celebrate, I sent off to the good folk at www.Active-Robots.com for a Ping sensor and mounting kit. Amazingly, I ordered it at 3pm on the Friday and it arrived in the post the very next day. Damn good service from those guys.
The Ping sensor is an ultrasonic distance measurement sensor, which has a range of 2cm to 3m. Its a useful thing. The mounting kit comes with a standard servo motor, the workings of which I'm unfamiliar with - what I know about servo's is written up on this blog - so I'm currently in the process of experimenting with it.
At the moment, all I've been able to come up with is the following code:
which simply returns the servo to its central position. I should note, the majority of the code above was lifted from the information .pdf I downloaded from the Paralaxx website. The original code initially took the servo back to its central position and held it there for about 5 seconds. What I've done is whittle the time down so I can use that code as a subroutine to return the servo to center from any position it may be in. 11 pulses is sufficient to return it to center from any point along its slightly more than 180 degrees of travel.
As I discovered, standard (limited turn) servos dont seem to need to be centered like continuous rotation servos. This simplifies things, however I need to figure out how many pulses will take it to extreme left and extreme right. Simple enough to do, I think some code like the following will do the trick:
Useful that PBASIC counts down in that particular manner. Obviously, the reverse code will do for the other extremity:
If it doesn't find the extremity within 100 pulses, I'll be surprised, since it only takes a maximum of 11 pulses to return it to center.
More later.
What I've been doing is sort of not much, although there has been a little bit of action.
I was paid a week ago and to celebrate, I sent off to the good folk at www.Active-Robots.com for a Ping sensor and mounting kit. Amazingly, I ordered it at 3pm on the Friday and it arrived in the post the very next day. Damn good service from those guys.
The Ping sensor is an ultrasonic distance measurement sensor, which has a range of 2cm to 3m. Its a useful thing. The mounting kit comes with a standard servo motor, the workings of which I'm unfamiliar with - what I know about servo's is written up on this blog - so I'm currently in the process of experimenting with it.
At the moment, all I've been able to come up with is the following code:
FOR counter = 1 TO 11
PULSOUT 14, 750
PAUSE 20
DEBUG CR, DEC counter
NEXT
PULSOUT 14, 750
PAUSE 20
DEBUG CR, DEC counter
NEXT
which simply returns the servo to its central position. I should note, the majority of the code above was lifted from the information .pdf I downloaded from the Paralaxx website. The original code initially took the servo back to its central position and held it there for about 5 seconds. What I've done is whittle the time down so I can use that code as a subroutine to return the servo to center from any position it may be in. 11 pulses is sufficient to return it to center from any point along its slightly more than 180 degrees of travel.
As I discovered, standard (limited turn) servos dont seem to need to be centered like continuous rotation servos. This simplifies things, however I need to figure out how many pulses will take it to extreme left and extreme right. Simple enough to do, I think some code like the following will do the trick:
FOR counter = 750 TO 650
PULSOUT 14, counter
DEBUG CR, DEC counter
PAUSE 20
NEXT
Useful that PBASIC counts down in that particular manner. Obviously, the reverse code will do for the other extremity:
FOR counter = 750 TO 850
PULSOUT 14, counter
DEBUG CR, DEC counter
PAUSE 20
NEXT
If it doesn't find the extremity within 100 pulses, I'll be surprised, since it only takes a maximum of 11 pulses to return it to center.
More later.
Wednesday 9 February 2011
I'm not telling you what this is.
Call it a private joke
erk: C0 CE FE 84 C2 27 F7 5B D0 7A 7E B8 46 50 9F 93 B2 38 E7 70 DA CB 9F F4 A3 88 F8 12 48 2B E2 1B
riv: 47 EE 74 54 E4 77 4C C9 B8 96 0C 7B 59 F4 C1 4D
pub: C2 D4 AA F3 19 35 50 19 AF 99 D4 4E 2B 58 CA 29 25 2C 89 12 3D 11 D6 21 8F 40 B1 38 CA B2 9B 71 01 F3 AE B7 2A 97 50 19
R: 80 6E 07 8F A1 52 97 90 CE 1A AE 02 BA DD 6F AA A6 AF 74 17
n: E1 3A 7E BC 3A CC EB 1C B5 6C C8 60 FC AB DB 6A 04 8C 55 E1
K: BA 90 55 91 68 61 B9 77 ED CB ED 92 00 50 92 F6 6C 7A 3D 8D
Da: C5 B2 BF A1 A4 13 DD 16 F2 6D 31 C0 F2 ED 47 20 DC FB 06 70
<3 you Sony.
erk: C0 CE FE 84 C2 27 F7 5B D0 7A 7E B8 46 50 9F 93 B2 38 E7 70 DA CB 9F F4 A3 88 F8 12 48 2B E2 1B
riv: 47 EE 74 54 E4 77 4C C9 B8 96 0C 7B 59 F4 C1 4D
pub: C2 D4 AA F3 19 35 50 19 AF 99 D4 4E 2B 58 CA 29 25 2C 89 12 3D 11 D6 21 8F 40 B1 38 CA B2 9B 71 01 F3 AE B7 2A 97 50 19
R: 80 6E 07 8F A1 52 97 90 CE 1A AE 02 BA DD 6F AA A6 AF 74 17
n: E1 3A 7E BC 3A CC EB 1C B5 6C C8 60 FC AB DB 6A 04 8C 55 E1
K: BA 90 55 91 68 61 B9 77 ED CB ED 92 00 50 92 F6 6C 7A 3D 8D
Da: C5 B2 BF A1 A4 13 DD 16 F2 6D 31 C0 F2 ED 47 20 DC FB 06 70
<3 you Sony.
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