Glossary

BaPSF

Basic Plasma Science Facility

The Basic Plasma Science Facility is a US national collaborative research facility for fundamental plasma physics, supported by the US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. (https://plasma.physics.ucla.edu/)

drive

See probe drive

event loop

An event loop is a programming design pattern that waits for and dispatches events or messages in the program. bapsf_motion predominately utilizes the asyncio event loop.

exclusion layer

exclusion layers

See motion exclusion

LaPD

LAPD

Large Plasma Device

The Large Plasma Device is the primary devices deployed at BaPSF.

motion builder

The motion builder (i.e. MotionBuilder) is the entity that manages all the functionality around probe drive motion in the motion space. This functionality includes: (1) defining the physical motion space, (2) building and generating the motion list, and (3) generating motion trajectories to avoid obstacles in the motion space.

motion builder item

Terminology referring to the xarray.DataArray or the class/ instance object that manages that DataArray in the motion builder xarray.Dataset. Also see MotionBuilder and MBItem.

motion exclusion

motion exclusions

An exclusion “layer” defined within the Dataset of the MotionBuilder. These layers are constructed by subclasses of BaseExclusion and define regions in the motion space where a probe is not allowed to be moved to.

motion group

A motion group is the entity that brings together all the components that are needed to move a probe drive around the motion space. These components include: (1) the full motion group configuration, (2) communicate with the probe drive, (3) an understand of the motion space as defined by the motion builder, and (4) how to convert between the motion spacer coordinate system and the probe drive coordinate system.

motion layer

motion layers

A “point” layer defined within the Dataset of the MotionBuilder. These layers are constructed by subclasses of BaseLayer and defined the desired points a probe should move to.

motion list

motion lists

A motion list is a 2-D, \(M \times N\) array containing the list of positions a given probe drive is supposed to move through during a data run. \(M\) represents the number of positions the probe must move to and \(N\) must me equal to the number of axes of the probe drive.

motion space

The \(N\)-D space the probe drive moves in, e.g. the LaPD volume.

point layer

point layers

See motion layer

probe

The plasma diagnostic, target, etc. that will be moved by the probe drive.

probe drive

A collection of \(N\) motor driven axes that are used to move a probe around the motion space.

probe drive space

The probe drive space is the space defined by the motorized axes of the probe drive. This space is not necessarily identical to the motion space coordinate systems. The transformers are intended to be the functionality that converts between these two coordinate systems.

transformer

transformers

A transformer is a member of the BaseTransform subclasses that provides, and does, coordinate transforms between the motion space coordinate system and the probe drive coordinate system, and vice versa.