Is my computer powerful enough?
Hello community,
My team is constructing an underwater glider that is going to be controlled by a PC104 computer. It is going to have to control/read from servos, pressure sensors, orientation sensors, and such while computing the all the autopilot information. This computer has a 500MHz processor and 256MB of DDR DRAM. Will it be powerful enough to run everything? It is having troubles with the turtle simulation in the tutorial; especially the mimicking turtle...
Thanks
Comments
Could you elaborate on "computing the all the autopilot information"? Do you need full 3D (6dof) navigation support w/ obstacle avoidance? Just, say, keep the glider going "straight and level"?
Eric Perko
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2011-07-22 10:15:12 -0500
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Sounds like a Geode LX800 board to me. I can recommend using a small Atom based board (for example FitPC2) instead. We did that on our KidSize humanoid robots 2 years ago and are quite happy with the improved performance. FitPC2 definitely works well with ROS.
Stefan Kohlbrecher
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2011-07-22 20:46:36 -0500
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I think you need to elaborate what you want to do algorithmically. As for the turtle: This should be a very simple example, but I guess you ran the GUI with it that was taking all the performance.
dornhege
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2011-07-23 00:03:43 -0500
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The autopilot system isn't really set in stone as of yet, but eventually this glider will be set loose in a large lake for a couple of days and it needs to be able to know it's position and stay on a course (which we will presumably set).
jamethy
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2011-07-25 05:49:13 -0500
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Also, I didn't think about the removal of the GUI during operation (I guess I need to get though the tutorial!). I'm sure this will improve performance. I just wanted to make sure that ROS is a good choice for us before we put all our effort into it, as we are set using the PC104.
jamethy
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2011-07-25 05:52:32 -0500
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PS Thanks for answering and so quickly!
jamethy
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2011-07-25 05:53:02 -0500
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