Page 176 - Concise Encyclopedia of Robotics

Interferometer
both hardware and software.The term is also used as a verb; when you con-
nect two devices together and make them compatible, you interface them.
Suppose you want to use a computer to control a robot.You must ensure
that they will work together. That is, you must interface the computer
with the robot. This requires the correct medium for transferring the data
(cable or wireless link), the use of the proper type of data port (parallel
or serial), and the correct program for robot control. In a robotic system,
all the moving parts are, in effect, peripherals to the controller, in the same
way as printers, scanners, and external drives are peripherals in a personal
computer system.
See also CONTROLLER.
INTERFEROMETER
See PRESENCE SENSING.
INTERPOLATION
When there is a gap in data, but data are available on either side of the gap,
an estimate of values within the gap can sometimes be made by means of
a mathematical process called interpolation.
Figure 1 shows a smooth curve with a gap in the plotted, or known,
values. The simplest way to interpolate the values within the unknown
region is to connect the “loose ends” of the curve with a straight line
(shown as a dashed line in this example). This is called linear interpolation.
More sophisticated schemes attempt to derive a function that defines the

Interpolation—Fig. 1

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