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

Mission briefing


The robot is mobile, but let's not let it get lost. You're going to add a GPS receiver so that you can always know where you are.

Why is it awesome?

As you let your device free, you may not only want it to know where it is, but also to have a way of finding out if it has made it to the desired location. One of the coolest things to connect to the robot is a GPS location device. In this project, I'll show you how to connect a GPS receiver to your robot and then use it to move in the correct direction.

Your objectives

In this project we will cover the following:

  • Connecting the BeagleBone Black to a GPS device

  • Accessing the GPS programmatically and determining how to move to a location

Mission checklist

In this project, you'll need a GPS device. There are a lot of options, and they come with many different interfaces, but because we want to avoid using a soldering iron or other complex connection processes, we're going to choose one with a USB interface. Here is an image of a device...