ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

first-order hold

Hey there, little buddy! Today we're going to talk about something called the "first-order hold." Have you ever seen a movie or cartoon where the picture looks like it's moving smoothly, instead of jumping around? That's because it's using something like a first-order hold!

Let's think about a robot arm that's moving from one point to another. If we wanted to control the speed of this arm, we could do it by telling the robot to move a tiny bit every second. This is called "sampling." However, if we only tell the robot where to be every second, it might end up moving too quickly or too slowly in between those two points.

To fix this, we can use a first-order hold. A first-order hold is a way for us to tell the robot how to move in between the two points. We can think of it as a little robot that follows the instructions we give it. So we might say "move slowly at first, then speed up towards the end."

By using a first-order hold, we can make sure that the robot arm moves smoothly, without jumping around or moving too fast or too slow. This helps us to control the robot more precisely and accurately.

Does that make sense, little buddy? If you have any questions, just let me know!