Motion Profiling

[flameout]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Ok. After reading a bit more online, I understand some of the terms. Jerk is caused by the transition between acceleration / velocity, velocity / deceleration, or acceleration / deceleration. Those are the 'sharp' points on the graph.

Technically, it's just the derivative of acceleration, but yes, that is effectively correct.

To create a motion profile utilizing acceleration and deceleration, don't you have experimentally measure these to accurately determine what your robot is capable of?

You just need to get them within the robot's capabilities -- if you're too close to your limits, then you'll get wheel slippage anyway, throwing off your distance measurements. You could probably get close enough just by looking at your wheel's CoF.

From what I understand, motion profiling would seem to get you to your position point more quickly that PID. With PID, you have your drive values taper off as you get closer to your setpoint. With motion profiling, you would stay at your maximum velocity until it's time to go into maximum deceleration.

I think that motion profiling would be slower than directly doing PID or PD on position, since motion profiling usually has a more gentle acceleration. One tradeoff, however, is that where pure PID/PD would spin the wheels on acceleration, motion profiling should prevent wheel slippage.

To everyone: Please let me know if I've made any mistakes in my interpretation of "motion profiling" -- I personally see several ways to do this, so I hope I am responding with the correct interpretation in mind.