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Retinal_Obj Class Reference

#include <robj.h>

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List of all members.

Detailed Description

Abstract base class for an object which has a discrete state and which can return an activation value for any given floating-point position in the plane.

Derived classes implement a hierarchy of objects of various shapes which produce greyscale activation patterns suitable e.g. for presentation to a network that processes images.

Definition at line 26 of file robj.h.

Public Types

typedef double Activity
 Type to use for an activity level.

typedef double Angle
 Type to use for an angle, in radians.

typedef double Coordinate
 Type to use for a distance or location on the surface of the retina.


Public Methods

virtual bool next ()=0
 Advance to the next state (whatever that means for this object).

virtual void reset ()=0
 Reset to the starting state.

virtual bool update () const=0
 Must be called just before calling activation() one or more times.

virtual Activity activation (Coordinate x, Coordinate y) const=0
 Activation level for the given Cartesian position.

virtual Angle angle () const=0
 Returns the orientation of this object in radians.

virtual string stringrep () const=0
 (Partial) representation of this object's state as a string

virtual std::ostream & put (std::ostream &s) const
 Virtual interface to the operator<<, since << cannot be virtual.


Member Function Documentation

virtual Angle Retinal_Obj::angle   const [pure virtual]
 

Returns the orientation of this object in radians.

This value is intended to be used only for convenience for tasks like constructing default filenames. Since not all Retinal_Objs are guaranteed to even have a meaningful orientation (e.g. circular objects or unbounded objects), bear in mind that the value will not always be useful.

Implemented in Retinal_Object, and Retinal_AnchoredManagedComposite.

virtual std::ostream& Retinal_Obj::put std::ostream &    s const [inline, virtual]
 

Virtual interface to the operator<<, since << cannot be virtual.

The string representation may someday be replaced with one that specifies the object entirely, in a form that can be read in using operator>>, rather than just printing the current state. Thus calling code should not rely upon this particular output format.

Definition at line 68 of file robj.h.

References stringrep().

Referenced by operator<<().


The documentation for this class was generated from the following file:
Generated on Mon Jan 20 02:37:19 2003 for RF-LISSOM by doxygen1.3-rc2