Book Image

Python Robotics Projects

By : Prof. Diwakar Vaish
Book Image

Python Robotics Projects

By: Prof. Diwakar Vaish

Overview of this book

Robotics is a fast-growing industry. Multiple surveys state that investment in the field has increased tenfold in the last 6 years, and is set to become a $100-billion sector by 2020. Robots are prevalent throughout all industries, and they are all set to be a part of our domestic lives. This book starts with the installation and basic steps in configuring a robotic controller. You'll then move on to setting up your environment to use Python with the robotic controller. You'll dive deep into building simple robotic projects, such as a pet-feeding robot, and more complicated projects, such as machine learning enabled home automation system (Jarvis), vision processing based robots and a self-driven robotic vehicle using Python. By the end of this book, you'll know how to build smart robots using Python.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Title Page
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 7. Sensor Interface for Obstacle Avoidance

To make a robotic vehicle that drives itself, we need to first understand how humans drive a vehicle. When we drive a car, we constantly analyze the space and the distance to other objects. Thereafter, we make a decision if we can go through it or not. This happens constantly with our brain – eye coordination. Similarly, a robot would have to do the same sort of thing. 

In our previous chapters, you learned that we can find the proximity of objects around us, using sensors. These sensors can tell us how far an object is, and based on it, we can make decisions. We have done using an ultrasonic sensor primarily because it is extremely cheap. However, as you remember, it was slightly cumbersome to attach ultrasonic sensors and to run its code. It's time that we take a much simpler sensor and attach it to the car. 

This chapter will cover the following topics:

  • Infrared proximity sensor
  • Autonomous emergency braking
  • Giving it self-steering capabilities...