Vector Mathematics in PBASIC

[Joe Johnson]

The problem with "vector math" is not really a problem using PBASIC -- the only problem is that you have to do everything yourself -- no functions are easily there for you to call to do the various stuff you would like to do with Vectors.

The biggest problem is actually just the unsigned 16 bit math makes things more tricky than usual.

On several of our robots, we kept track of the center of gravity of the arm. This allowed us to put in a "virtual counter balance" term so that our feedback loop did not have to have such a high gain.

Apart from the unsigned 16 bit math problem, the next thing was keeping straight the units of the arquments that the trig functions take.

One more thing is the bother of not enough memory or variable space.

Finally, it really stinks that there is no ASIN or ATAN. It would have been nice to use on many occassions. This is something we have gotten around (lookup is a wonderful function) but it is not as easy.


Good Luck,

Joe J.