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

Using eSpeak to allow your projects to respond in a robotic voice


Sound is an important tool in your robotic toolkit, but you will want to do more than just play music. Let's allow your robot to speak.

Prepare for lift off

Now that you can both get sound in and out of your BeagleBone Black, let's do something useful with this capability. You're going to start by enabling eSpeak, an open source application that provides you with a computer voice.

Engage thrusters

eSpeak is an open source voice generation application. To get this free functionality, you'll need to do the following.

Download the eSpeak library by typing sudo apt-get install espeak. You'll probably have to accept the additional size space that the application requires, but this is fine based on your SD card size. The download may take a while, but the prompt will reappear when it is complete.

Now, let's see if the BeagleBoard Black has a voice. Type the following command: espeak "hello". The speaker should emit a computer voiced ...