Peter Snow's Blog

Xcode 4

Peter — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:22:04 +0000

Today I decided to give in and download the beta release of Xcode 4 via the iOS Dev Center. First impressions are that I really am going to have to read the whole of the transitional documentation. All though all the components from the stable Xcode 3 release are there plus more, most the elements have been squeezed into the one application. This is a brilliant idea and makes the whole process concurrent but getting your head round the navigation is going to take some time getting used to. Looks like there are far more options regarding tweaking the app settings. I’ll give Xcode a more in-depth look once I’ve read the transitional docs and played around with it some more. In the meantime enjoy a screenshot I took of the app alongside the iPhone simulator.

The new Xcode!

MSc Final Result

Peter — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 21:50:47 +0000

Just realised that I haven’t updated the blog about the outcome of my research for my MSc project. It was awarded an A1 and overal I was awarded my MSc with Distinction. Now to hunt for a PhD post!

New start for 2011!

Peter — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 21:36:23 +0000

As part of my plan for 2011, I’ve decided to post something at least once a week (this time I will!) about something related.

I’ve also decided that once a month I will see something from TimeOut London to mix things up too and to break the work up.

End of MSc project plus future plans

Peter — Wed, 26 May 2010 20:02:00 +0000

The last few months have been very hectic but my MSc project has been handed in. Entitled “A study and implementation of stability controls
in humanoid robotics.” based on implemented two stability controls into the Simspark simulator. This work was part of my involvement in the RoboCup team, the Bold Hearts. My thesis can be found here MSc Thesis. Amendments will have to be made at a future date regardless.

Further work include optimising the stability controllers and adding more work to the Bold Hearts code such as a falling controller etc.

As part of my progress I will continue to implement different stability models and “brush up” subject areas which I am not as strong in.

For every model I implement and for general progress I achieve I will add a new blog post.

Ways of finding out how code works

Peter — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:08:42 +0000

Today(or rather should that be this evening) I have made a big push in finding exactly what code (which hasn’t been commented!!!!) does for a section of my project.

The offending code is related to the Morimoto et al Oscillator. In which the code I am basing my project on has a bear bones implementation of the Morimoto et al Oscillator.

I have spent the night running test on the simulator getting output on various variables to decipher what code is linked to which equations.

I have nearly mapped out most equations to the code bar a few which are still puzzling me. A reason why is that the graphs (what would I do without gnuplot!) are sometimes more confusing the the uncommented code! As shown below!

I’ll have a deeper look tomorrow and try to figure out the rest of the code. But progress tonight has been good

Progress…. finally!

Peter — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 14:13:02 +0000

Realised that I haven’t written anything for some time. I got a full time job, which has put some strain on my project but progress is being made.

In theory there are 3 sections to my work (ZRAM, Morimoto Oscillator and the combination of both). The ZRAM section is nearly done, with just the support polygon and the method to control the ZRAM point to deal with. The Morimoto Oscillator is thankfully just an add-on to work already done previously, maximum of 50 odd lines. The combination would be the easiest part which one one line of code to change

The next part would be to optimise the code via a neural net or GA. I have been thinking of the best way to do this. Previously we have used a grid computer to perform the process intensive neural nets/GA’s. But access is intermittent, I have been thinking of using my Playstation 3 which I can put Ubuntu on and leave it running 24/7. Progress with this will be detailed later…

That just leaves 12,000 words to write up for my report… 1000 words done so far…. time to put on the motivational music!