Book Image

BeagleBone Robotic Projects

By : Richard Grimmett
Book Image

BeagleBone Robotic Projects

By: Richard Grimmett

Overview of this book

Thanks to new, inexpensive microcontrollers, robotics has become far more accessible than it was in the past. These microcontrollers provide a whole new set of capabilities to allow even the most inexperienced users to make amazingly complicated projects. Beaglebone is effectively a small, light, cheap computer in a similar vein to Raspberry Pi and Arduino. It has all of the extensibility of today's desktop machines, but without the bulk, expense, or noise. This project guide provides step-by-step instructions to allow anyone to use this new, low cost platform in some fascinating robotics projects. By the time you are finished, your projects will be able to see, speak, listen, detect their surroundings, and move in a variety of amazing ways. The book begins with unpacking and powering up the components.This will include guidance on what to purchase and how to connect it all successfully–and a primer on programming the BeagleBone Black. Chapter by chapter, we will add additional software functionality available from the open source community, including how to make the system see using a webcam, how to hear using a microphone, and how to speak using a speaker. We then add hardware to make your robots move–including wheeled and legged examples–as well as covering how to add sonar sensors to avoid or find objects, plus wireless control to make your robot truly autonomous. Adding GPS allows the robot to find itself. Finally the book covers how to integrate all of this functionality so that it can all work together, before developing the most impressive robotics projects: those that can sail, fly, and explore underwater.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
BeagleBone Robotic Projects
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Providing the capability to interpret your commands and have your robot initiate an action


Now that your robot can both speak and listen, let's see if you can make it respond to your commands.

Prepare for lift off

Now that the system can both hear and speak, you want to provide the capability to respond to your speech and execute some commands based on the speech input. Now you're going to configure the system to respond to simple commands.

Engage thrusters

In order to respond, you're going to edit the continuous.c code in the /home/ubuntu/src/programs directory. You could create your own C file, but this file is already set up in the makefile system and is an excellent starting spot. I like to make a copy of the current file into continuous.c.old, so I can always get back to the starting program if it is required. Then you will need to edit the continuous.c file. It is very long and a bit complicated, but you are specifically looking for the following section in the code:

In this section of...