What does time constant mean?

How long a first order system takes to cover 63 percent of the way to its final value after a step, written tau. After about three time constants it has covered 95 percent; for this robot's drive tau is about a quarter of a second.

Also written as: time constants

Learn it

• Taught in U1.6 Measuring your robot The robot as a system, University

Used in

• U1.4 Time, rate and latency
• U4.5 The price of filtering
• U4.6 Choosing the filter
• U5.1 The feedback loop
• U6.1 Two sources, one state
• U10.2 Velocity profiles
• U10.3 Cross-track error
• U10.6 How far behind
• U12.2 Fitting a model to data

All glossary terms