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Equation 5 · Part 8 · Why the Physical World Is Harder

Numerator: 1

tsense+tcompute+tactuate<1f.t_{\mathrm{sense}} + t_{\mathrm{compute}} + t_{\mathrm{actuate}} < \frac{1}{f}.
11

What this part means

The complete quantity above the fraction bar.

Its job in the formula

1 occurs above the fraction bar. The numerator is divided by the entire denominator below it.

The passage around this formula

Language models became substantially more capable by thinking for longer at inference time. That option is bounded on a robot, and the bound is not a matter of taste. A closed-loop controller running at frequency f must complete sensing, computation and actuation within one cycle: tsense+tcompute+tactuate<1ft_{\mathrm{sense}} + t_{\mathrm{compute}} + t_{\mathrm{actuate}} < \frac{1}{f}. The pi-zero model is documented as producing actions at up to 50 Hz for dexterous tasks [ 3 ] , which leaves a 20-millisecond budget for everything. No amount of chain-of-thought fits in 20 milliseconds. Worse, missing the deadline is not merely slow: a controller that arrives late in a contact-rich interaction is acting on a stale world model, and in a stiff contact the resulting force error…

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Learn the underlying idea

A fraction a/b means a divided by b. The top number is the numerator; the bottom number is the denominator, and it cannot be zero.

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Sources cited in the surrounding passage

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