Inertial measurement unitAn inertial measurement unit (IMU) is an electronic device that measures and reports a body's specific force, angular rate, and sometimes the orientation of the body, using a combination of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and sometimes magnetometers. When the magnetometer is included, IMUs are referred to as IMMUs. IMUs are typically used to maneuver modern vehicles including motorcycles, missiles, aircraft (an attitude and heading reference system), including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), among many others, and spacecraft, including satellites and landers.
Machine toolA machine tool is a machine for handling or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformations. Machine tools employ some sort of tool that does the cutting or shaping. All machine tools have some means of constraining the workpiece and provide a guided movement of the parts of the machine. Thus, the relative movement between the workpiece and the cutting tool (which is called the toolpath) is controlled or constrained by the machine to at least some extent, rather than being entirely "offhand" or "freehand".
Power toolA power tool is a tool that is actuated by an additional power source and mechanism other than the solely manual labor used with hand tools. The most common types of power tools use electric motors. Internal combustion engines and compressed air are also commonly used. Tools directly driven by animal power are not generally considered power tools. Power tools are used in industry, in construction, in the garden, for housework tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and around the house for purposes of driving (fasteners), drilling, cutting, shaping, sanding, grinding, routing, polishing, painting, heating and more.
VelocityVelocity is the speed and the direction of motion of an object. Velocity is a fundamental concept in kinematics, the branch of classical mechanics that describes the motion of bodies. Velocity is a physical vector quantity: both magnitude and direction are needed to define it. The scalar absolute value (magnitude) of velocity is called , being a coherent derived unit whose quantity is measured in the SI (metric system) as metres per second (m/s or m⋅s−1). For example, "5 metres per second" is a scalar, whereas "5 metres per second east" is a vector.
Angular velocityIn physics, angular velocity (symbol ω, sometimes Ω), also known as angular frequency vector, is a pseudovector representation of how the angular position or orientation of an object changes with time, i.e. how quickly an object rotates (spins or revolves) around an axis of rotation and how fast the axis itself changes direction. The magnitude of the pseudovector, , represents the angular speed (or angular frequency), the rate at which the object rotates (spins or revolves).
ToolA tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates back hundreds of millennia, have been observed using tools to make other tools. Early human tools, made of such materials as stone, bone, and wood, were used for the preparation of food, hunting, the manufacture of weapons, and the working of materials to produce clothing and useful artifacts and crafts such as pottery, along with the construction of housing, businesses, infrastructure, and transportation.
Approximation errorThe approximation error in a data value is the discrepancy between an exact value and some approximation to it. This error can be expressed as an absolute error (the numerical amount of the discrepancy) or as a relative error (the absolute error divided by the data value). An approximation error can occur for a variety of reasons, among them a computing machine precision or measurement error (e.g. the length of a piece of paper is 4.53 cm but the ruler only allows you to estimate it to the nearest 0.
Verlet integrationVerlet integration (vɛʁˈlɛ) is a numerical method used to integrate Newton's equations of motion. It is frequently used to calculate trajectories of particles in molecular dynamics simulations and computer graphics. The algorithm was first used in 1791 by Jean Baptiste Delambre and has been rediscovered many times since then, most recently by Loup Verlet in the 1960s for use in molecular dynamics. It was also used by P. H. Cowell and A. C. C.
Tool and die makerTool and die makers are highly skilled crafters working in the manufacturing industries. Variations on the name include tool maker, toolmaker, die maker, diemaker, mold maker, moldmaker or tool jig and die-maker depending on which area of concentration or industry an individual works in. Tool and die makers work primarily in toolroom environments—sometimes literally in one room but more often in an environment with flexible, semipermeable boundaries from production work.
Swimming poolA swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground (in-ground pools) or built above ground (as a freestanding construction or as part of a building or other larger structure), and may be found as a feature aboard ocean-liners and cruise ships.
SpeedIn everyday use and in kinematics, the speed (commonly referred to as v) of an object is the magnitude of the change of its position over time or the magnitude of the change of its position per unit of time; it is thus a scalar quantity. The average speed of an object in an interval of time is the distance travelled by the object divided by the duration of the interval; the instantaneous speed is the limit of the average speed as the duration of the time interval approaches zero.
Insect flightInsects are the only group of invertebrates that have evolved wings and flight. Insects first flew in the Carboniferous, some 300 to 350 million years ago, making them the first animals to evolve flight. Wings may have evolved from appendages on the sides of existing limbs, which already had nerves, joints, and muscles used for other purposes. These may initially have been used for sailing on water, or to slow the rate of descent when gliding. Two insect groups, the dragonflies and the mayflies, have flight muscles attached directly to the wings.
Guidance, navigation, and controlGuidance, navigation and control (abbreviated GNC, GN&C, or G&C) is a branch of engineering dealing with the design of systems to control the movement of vehicles, especially, automobiles, ships, aircraft, and spacecraft. In many cases these functions can be performed by trained humans. However, because of the speed of, for example, a rocket's dynamics, human reaction time is too slow to control this movement. Therefore, systems—now almost exclusively digital electronic—are used for such control.
Symplectic integratorIn mathematics, a symplectic integrator (SI) is a numerical integration scheme for Hamiltonian systems. Symplectic integrators form the subclass of geometric integrators which, by definition, are canonical transformations. They are widely used in nonlinear dynamics, molecular dynamics, discrete element methods, accelerator physics, plasma physics, quantum physics, and celestial mechanics. Symplectic integrators are designed for the numerical solution of Hamilton's equations, which read where denotes the position coordinates, the momentum coordinates, and is the Hamiltonian.
Proper velocityIn relativity, proper velocity (also known as celerity) w of an object relative to an observer is the ratio between observer-measured displacement vector and proper time τ elapsed on the clocks of the traveling object: It is an alternative to ordinary velocity, the distance per unit time where both distance and time are measured by the observer. The two types of velocity, ordinary and proper, are very nearly equal at low speeds. However, at high speeds proper velocity retains many of the properties that velocity loses in relativity compared with Newtonian theory.
Round-off errorIn computing, a roundoff error, also called rounding error, is the difference between the result produced by a given algorithm using exact arithmetic and the result produced by the same algorithm using finite-precision, rounded arithmetic. Rounding errors are due to inexactness in the representation of real numbers and the arithmetic operations done with them. This is a form of quantization error.
Prim's algorithmIn computer science, Prim's algorithm (also known as Jarník's algorithm) is a greedy algorithm that finds a minimum spanning tree for a weighted undirected graph. This means it finds a subset of the edges that forms a tree that includes every vertex, where the total weight of all the edges in the tree is minimized. The algorithm operates by building this tree one vertex at a time, from an arbitrary starting vertex, at each step adding the cheapest possible connection from the tree to another vertex.
True anomalyIn celestial mechanics, true anomaly is an angular parameter that defines the position of a body moving along a Keplerian orbit. It is the angle between the direction of periapsis and the current position of the body, as seen from the main focus of the ellipse (the point around which the object orbits). The true anomaly is usually denoted by the Greek letters ν or θ, or the Latin letter f, and is usually restricted to the range 0–360° (0–2π^c).
Orbital speedIn gravitationally bound systems, the orbital speed of an astronomical body or object (e.g. planet, moon, artificial satellite, spacecraft, or star) is the speed at which it orbits around either the barycenter or, if one body is much more massive than the other bodies of the system combined, its speed relative to the center of mass of the most massive body. The term can be used to refer to either the mean orbital speed (i.e. the average speed over an entire orbit) or its instantaneous speed at a particular point in its orbit.
Attitude and heading reference systemAn attitude and heading reference system (AHRS) consists of sensors on three axes that provide attitude information for aircraft, including roll, pitch, and yaw. These are sometimes referred to as MARG (Magnetic, Angular Rate, and Gravity) sensors and consist of either solid-state or microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers. They are designed to replace traditional mechanical gyroscopic flight instruments.
