Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Application Area
Associated Technologies
Process Control
Equipment control
Robotics
Automatic data collection
Archiving
Databases
IT infrastructure
Vocabulary
Numerical Processing
Pattern matching
Simulation
Data mining
Search engines
Statistical analysis
Visualization
Communications
Desktop publishing
Web publishing
Internet
Control is unique in the computer science arena in that it involves directly interfacing the physical
world with the digital one through stepper motors (electric motors that rotate a fixed number of
degrees in fixed steps), robotic arm assemblies, event counters, and other input and output devices
other than the traditional keyboard, mouse, and monitor. However, except for this feature, the
underlying computing issues, from complexity and logic to language, are relevant to computing and
numerical processing, archiving, and communications. These computing concepts are introduced
here.
For example, in addition to the Turing model, digital computing is inexorably tied to Boolean logic,
advanced in the 1840s by the self-taught professor of mathematics, George Boole. That is, in
addition to the arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication, the digital
computers deal with operations such as AND and OR, illustrated by the truth tables in
Figure 1-12
. As
shown in the truth table for the AND operator, the output is high (1) only when both inputs (A AND
B) are high. Conversely, as shown on the truth table for the OR operator, the output is high when
either inputs (A OR B) are high.
Figure 1-12. Boolean Operators. The AND and OR logic operators form the
basis of digital computer operations. Compare the truth tables for each
operator with the translation wheel in
Figure 1-7
.
