We live in an amazing age. We are mostly aware of how amazing it is as we live in an age where major changes to how we live occur well within a lifetime, sometimes within a few years. Nowhere is this more evident than in the general area of technology, and the specific area of computers. Not so many years ago, certainly within the lifespan of most of the baby-boomer generation, computers were distant machines kept in the backrooms of large corporations or universities. Access to them was tightly controlled. If you wanted to program them, you punched your computer cards, fed them into the card reader, and then, after an hour or so of wait, you went to receive your computer printout. This was, I regret to reveal, part of my first experience with a computer.

These large computers were the domain of companies such as IBM, with their model 360, Digital Equipment, with the Model PDP-7, and Hewlett-Packard, with the Model 1000. These computers cost many thousands of dollars, and were rarely seen except by a privileged few, who had access to climate-controlled computer rooms.

This model fit the world just wonderfully for many years, until the advent of the personal computer. I was lucky to know someone who purchased one of the very first IBM-PCs. It had two floppies, a monochrome monitor, and was an amazing piece of equipment. Suddenly the world changed and the technology that had seemed so remote was now available on the desktop. This same technological revolution in processing power also birthed a new breed of dedicated microprocessors. These could be used for specific tasks that had previously been the realm of analog circuitry or, in many cases, human interaction with mechanical systems.

These processing solutions to specific applications are named embedded systems. They take the digital calculating capability of personal computers and shrink them even further so they can be placed in common household and industrial objects. Embedded technology has also evolved with respect to price; fortunate, for few would be willing to pay several thousand dollars for a door lock or temperature sensor. The initial embedded devices were very limited in their technology, and developing applications with them became quite a challenge. It was very common to run out of either computing horsepower or memory. Many nights were spent by the talented few shoehorning the last features into the last few bytes of memory.

The computer age has spawned an amazing array of technical advances in both the hardware and software areas. Companies such as Intel and AMD have created processors with almost unfathomable computing power and more available memory that once thought possible, and both Microsoft and Apple have provided major advances in the area of software functionality and usability. The personal computer has become a standard tool in most households, schools, businesses, and factories.

As the personal computer has gone, so has the embedded systems world. From what were once four bit, special purpose processors with 2000 bytes of memory, now embedded processors have emerged that rival the performance and capability of standard personal computers. One has to look no further than the cell phone for an example of significant computing capability in very small packages, and at very inexpensive prices.

This has all reached a bit of a crescendo with the introduction of small, inexpensive systems that can not only run simple, focused applications, but have the capability of powering almost any type of computing need we can create. At the same time these small but powerful systems have outgrown the small, single purpose development environments as well. They are now paired with powerful operating systems, and provide personal computer-like functionality in very small packages. The overwhelming advance of tablets and smart phones has begun to take over the face of computing for many applications.

These advances have also affected the embedded area as well. Small, highly capable systems have married very inexpensive hardware with free, open source software to provide a platform for almost anyone to explore the embedded world. The Arduino, the Raspberry Pi, and now the BeagleBone Black are all platforms that offer not only an affordable price point, but also an open source software community that provides free capability and an easy way to interact with others to get answers to questions or exchange ideas. With these new capabilities, as we shall see later in the book, the sky is literally the limit.

This book will focus on just one of these processors, the BeagleBone Black. However, much of what is written here could be applied to other choices with some limited modifications. But this is not what you came here to learn. You came to learn how to build some very interesting, complex, amazing robotics projects. And processors such as the BeagleBone Black are impressive because they have the capability to not only make this possible, but to make it accessible to those outside of academic or research communities. In this book, we'll explore these capabilities, and build some very impressive projects.

Just a few comments on how the book is laid out. We'll start with a very basic introduction to the BeagleBone Black, and how to get the hardware and software up and working. Then, we'll build some basic functionality on top of the basic system, showing you how to add sound, vision, and control.

Then we'll tackle some fairly complex capability, including GPS, audio, and some advanced sensors. Finally, we'll wrap it up by showing you how to put an entire system together with some tools that can make that a bit less complicated.

In each chapter, I'll give you some very specific instructions for how to proceed. This is a bit dangerous, and the instructions are all going to be subject to change. Hopefully you'll understand the basics of what we are trying to accomplish, so if things don't go quite to plan, you'll be able to figure out how to proceed. There is a lot of help out there, between message boards and blogs, so don't be shy.

What is critical to remember is that this is not an academic exercise. Don't just read the book, but do something with the hardware. My hope is that by the end, you'll be building the kinds of machines that will lead us all into the 22nd century. I often tell my students that their children will grow up as comfortable with robots as they are with computers.

So, let's begin!

#Smooth image, then convert the Hue
    cv.Smooth(img,img,cv.CV_BLUR,3)
    hue_img = cv.CreateImage(cv.GetSize(img), 8, 3)
    cv.CvtColor(img,hue_img, cv.CV_BGR2HSV)

xz -cd ubuntu-precise-12.04.2-armhf-3.8.13-bone20.img.xz > /dev/sdX