Periodic Task (vi) - Thoughts?

[Greg McKaskle]

Periodic tasks is really just a template showing that code can run in parallel with the telelop VI.

The camera code runs independently and publishes results. This is especially good since cameras are somewhat slow sensors. You wouldn't want the camera to limit when the teleop finished, right?

Similarly, any periodic tasks, especially slow ones should be considered for this approach. If you have a PID loop, especially if the teleop loop rate isn't the ideal loop rate for the PID, move the PID into periodic. Update the setpoints from within teleop, but let the sensor reads, the calculations, and the value updates happen within periodic.

By moving things out, and running control loops at the rate they need, rather than the rate of the joysticks, hopefully you can have your teleop running at 20ms instead of 100.

Doug Norman and I will be giving a presentation in St Louis which covers this in a bit more detail. I'm assuming the slides will be available afterwards.

Greg McKaskle