Quote:
Originally Posted by slavik262
3. The new processor combined with RAM 1000 times greater than this year's processor will finally open doors to us using dynamic memory allocation. Combined with C++, this will let teams do some pretty awesome stuff.
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*shudders* If you're willingly going to walk into the fray of dynamic memory allocation on a real-time, (relatively) high-speed system, you have my sympathy. I know I wouldn't look forward to tracing down memory leaks, or figuring out how to fail gracefully when my autonomous routine couldn't grab enough memory. Mostly it's something I just don't want to have to worry about.
Also, in reply to Chris's rather long post:
I just started working at
Arc Specialties where we making welding robots of various sorts. And yes, 75% of our robot run off a single Omron PLC. I had the privilege of being tossed into ladder logic cold, but as you've noted, having a programmer's mindset tends to make moving from one environment to another largely a matter of syntax. I was also interested to discover that thinking in terms of small, high speed loops for programming the IFI RC developed a good frame of mind and some useful habits for programming in ladder logic. I'm sad to see the IFI controller go for this reason in particular. It's been preparing a large number of programming students for a smooth-ish transition into the ladder logic that's in charge of the vast majority of robots out there.
I'll also agree that I really like Labview for data acquisition, signal processing, and other high speed applications like motion control. It's difficult to get around the fact that implementing a state machine or anything like it in Labview can get pretty annoying. I had to implement one for some automated testing of a device in college and keeping track of every input and output from the case structure, as well as how to manage the transitions, quickly got on my nerves. And that was a fairly simple and straightforward sequential state machine. Unless NI will be providing us with the State Chart module, which seems unlikely, I'm not at all going to relish our team developing an autonomous mode of any real complexity. Nor implementing any other automated functions during teleop mode that can't be broken down into simple signal processing with an on-off switch.
Also, thanks TONS for
MrPLC. I'm uncertain I would have survived my first project here without that forum and the resources and documentation provided there.