Technical Glossary¶
Hardware Protocols & Communication Buses¶
SPI¶
Serial Peripheral Interface — Synchronous serial communication interface specification used for short-distance communication, primarily in embedded systems. Operates at high speeds using a master-slave architecture with four dedicated lines (SCLK, MOSI, MISO, SS).
I2C (or I²C)¶
Inter-Integrated Circuit — Synchronous, multi-master, multi-slave, packet-switched, single-ended, serial communication bus. Uses only two bidirectional lines: SDA (Serial Data) and SCL (Serial Clock). Ideal for connecting low-speed peripherals like onboard sensors.
UART¶
Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter — Asynchronous serial communication protocol that transmits data sequentially bit by bit. Requires no shared clock signal, relying instead on pre-configured baud rates between transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX).
Software & Networking Frameworks¶
ZeroMQ (ØMQ)¶
A high-performance asynchronous messaging library aimed at use in distributed or concurrent applications. It provides a message queue without a dedicated message broker, enabling fast inter-process communication (IPC) and network streaming (e.g., streaming video feeds or telemetry data).
Docker¶
An open-source containerization platform that packages software, dependencies, and environment configurations into isolated containers. Ensures consistent execution across development environments, edge hardware, and offboard compute stations.
Hardware Platforms & Control Hardware¶
Legion Go¶
Lenovo's high-performance handheld PC powered by Windows/Linux. Serves as a portable Ground Control Station (GCS) and mobile compute interface equipped with physical joysticks, dedicated buttons, and an 8.8-inch touchscreen.
Artificial Intelligence & Processing¶
LLM¶
Large Language Model — Deep learning models trained on vast amounts of text data, capable of understanding, generating, and processing natural language for interactive assistant features and decision-making systems.
STT¶
Speech-to-Text — Technology that converts spoken human voice into written text in real-time, enabling voice commands and natural speech processing on robotic platforms.
TTS¶
Text-to-Speech — Speech synthesis technology that converts written text into synthesized vocal audio, allowing robots to communicate verbally with operators or spectators.
Ollama¶
An open-source tool designed to run Large Language Models (LLMs) locally on edge devices or offboard workstations, providing privacy, low latency, and independence from cloud services.