Chapter 1, Adding Raspberry Pi to an RC Vehicle, shows you how to add Raspberry Pi to an existing toy, such as an old RC car or truck, to make it "new" again.

Chapter 2, Adding Raspberry Pi to a Humanoid Robot, covers how to add Raspberry Pi to robots, such as the Robosapien line from WowWee, to add voice commands and make them more versatile.

Chapter 3, Building a Tracked Vehicle That Can Plan Its Own Path, explains how to build a tracked robot containing sensors so that it can map the position of a set of objects.

Chapter 4, Building a Robot That Can Play Laser Tag, covers how to use the capabilities of Raspberry Pi to build a wheeled robot that can play laser tag.

Chapter 5, A Robot That Can Draw, introduces the capability of external dedicated servo controllers that can make controlling the arms and legs of the robot much easier. This is done using servos, whose position can be controlled using our system.

Chapter 6, A Robot That Can Play Air Hockey, explains how to use stepper motors and an advanced vision system to build a robot that can plan air hockey using more power and precision.

Chapter 7, A Robot That Can Fly, explains that after building a robot that can walk, talk, or play air hockey, you can build a robot that can fly.

This all-embracing guide is created for anyone who is interested in expanding their horizon in applying the peripherals of Raspberry Pi. If you fancy building complex-looking robots with simple, inexpensive, and readily available hardware, then this is the ideal book for you. Prior understanding of Raspberry Pi with simple mechanical systems is recommended.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Type cd rrb2-1.1—this will change the directory to the location of the files."

A block of code is set as follows:

void loop()
{
  int dt;
  uint8_t logOutput=0;
  debug_counter++;
  timer_value = micros();

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

volatile int viRobsapienCmd = -1;  // A robosapien command sent over the UART request
// Some but not all RS commands are defined
#define RSTurnRight       0x80
#define RSRightArmUp      0x81

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Now click on Connect on Remote Desktop Viewer."

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