Page 8 - Designing Autonomous Mobile Robots : Inside the Mindo f an Intellegent Machine
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Contents
Foreword ..................................................................................................xiii
What’s on the CD-ROM? ...........................................................................xv
SECTION 1 – Background Software and Concepts ............................... 1
Chapter 1: Measure Twice, Cut Once .......................................................... 3
Determinism ..................................................................................................... 3
Rule-based systems, state-driven systems, and other potential tar pits........... 4
Defining an open architecture ....................................................................... 10
Chapter 2: A Brief History of Software Concepts ...................................... 11
Assembly language ......................................................................................... 12
Early conventional languages......................................................................... 13
Compilers vs. interpreters .............................................................................. 15
The GUI revolution ....................................................................................... 17
The great rift .................................................................................................. 18
Object-oriented programming ....................................................................... 18
Robots and robot subsystems as objects ......................................................... 20
Network languages ......................................................................................... 21
Chapter 3: The Basics of Real-time Software (For Mere Mortals) ............. 23
Threads ........................................................................................................... 23
Interrupts and stacks ...................................................................................... 24
Context........................................................................................................... 26
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