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 the keyboard to control your project


Now the keyboard is connected, let's figure out how to accept commands on the BeagleBone Black.

Prepare for lift off

You can now enter commands wirelessly. The next step is to create a program that can take these commands and then have your project execute them. There are a couple of choices here and I'll give you examples of both. The first is simply to include the command interface in your program. Let's take the example of the program you wrote to move your wheeled robot, robot.py. If you like you can copy that program using cp robot.py remote.py. The following screenshot shows a listing of the current program in the area you want to change:

Engage thrusters

In order to add user control, you need two new programming constructs: the while loop and the if statement. Let's add them to the program, and then I'll explain what they do. The following screenshot shows a listing of the area of the code you are going to change:

You will edit your program by...