Glossary

DHCP
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is used to automatically assign an IP address to a network device. Some DHCP servers only accept known devices. In this case, an administrator needs to configure the DHCP server with the fixed MAC address of a device.
DNS
mDNS
The Domain Name Server (DNS) manages the host names and IP addresses of all network devices. It is responsible for resolving the host name into the IP address for communication with a device. A DNS can be configured to get this information automatically when a device appears on a network or manually by an administrator. In contrast, multicast DNS (mDNS) works without a central server by querying all devices on a local network each time a host name needs to be resolved. mDNS is available by default on Linux and Mac operating systems and is used when ‘.local’ is appended to a host name.
DOF
The Degrees Of Freedom (DOF) are the number of independent parameters for translation and rotation. In 3D space, 6DOF (i.e. three for translation and three rotation) are sufficient to describe an arbitrary position and orientation.
GenICam
GenICam is a generic standard interface for cameras. It serves as a unified interface around other standards such as GigE Vision, Camera Link, USB, etc. See http://genicam.org for more information.
GigE
Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) is a networking technology for transmitting data at one gigabit per second.
GigE Vision
GigE Vision® is a standard for configuring cameras and transmitting images over a GigE network link. See http://gigevision.com for more information.
IMU
An Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) consists of three accelerometers and three gyroscopes that measure the linear accelerations and the turn rates in all three dimensions.
INS
An Inertial Navigation System (INS) is a 3D measurement system which uses inertial measurements (accelerations and turn rates) to compute position and orientation information. We refer to our combination of stereo vision and inertial navigation as stereo INS.
IP
IP address
The Internet Protocol (IP) is a standard for sending data between devices in a computer network. Every device requires an IP address, which must be unique in the network. The IP address can be configured by DHCP, Link-Local, or manually.
Link-Local is a technology where network devices associate themselves with an IP address from the 169.254.0.0/16 IP range and check if it is unique in the local network. Link-Local can be used if DHCP is unavailable and manual IP configuration is not or cannot be done. Link-Local is especially useful for connecting a network device directly to a host computer. By default, Windows 10 reverts automatically to Link-Local if DHCP is unavailable. Under Linux, Link-Local must be enabled manually in the network manager.
MAC address
The Media Access Control (MAC) address is a unique, persistent address for networking devices. It is also known as the hardware address of a device. In contrast to the IP address, the MAC address is (normally) permanently given to a device and does not change.
NTP
The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a TCP/IP protocol for synchronizing time over a network. Basically a client requests the current time from a server, and uses it to set its own clock.
PTP
The Precision Time Protocol (PTP, also known as IEEE1588) is a protocol which enables more precise and robust clock synchronization than with NTP.
SDK
A Software Development Kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools or a collection of software components.
SGM
SGM stands for Semi-Global Matching and is a state-of-the-art stereo matching algorithm which offers brief run times and a great accuracy, especially at object borders, fine structures, and in weakly textured areas.
SLAM
SLAM stands for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping and describes the process of creating a map of an unknown environment and simultaneously updating the sensor pose within the map.
TCP
The Tool Center Point (TCP) is the position of the tool at the end effector of a robot. The position and orientation of the TCP determines the position and orientation of the tool in 3D space.
UDP
The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is the minimal message-oriented transport layer of the Internet Protocol (IP) family. It uses a simple connectionless transmission model with a minimum of protocol mechanism such as integrity verification (via checksum). The rc_visard uses UDP for publishing its estimated dynamical states via the rc_dynamics interface. To receive this data, applications may use datagram sockets to bind to the endpoint of the data transmission consisting of a combination of an IP address and a service port number such as 192.168.0.100:49500, which is typically referred to as a destination of an rc_dynamics data stream in this documentation.
URI
URL

A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a string of characters identifying resources of the rc_visard’s REST-API. An example of such a URI is /nodes/rc_camera/parameters/fps, which points to the fps run-time parameter of the stereo camera module.

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) additionally specifies the full network location and protocol, i.e., an exemplary URL to locate the above resource would be https://<ip>/api/v1/nodes/rc_camera/parameters/fps where <ip> refers to the rc_visard’s IP address.

XYZ+quaternion
Format to represent a pose. See Rotation matrix and translation vector for its definition.
XYZABC
Format to represent a pose. See KUKA XYZ-ABC format for its definition.