Book Image

BeagleBone Robotic Projects - Second Edition

Book Image

BeagleBone Robotic Projects - Second Edition

Overview of this book

BeagleBone Blue 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 that enable 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 includes guidance on what to purchase and how to connect it all successfully, and a primer on programming the BeagleBone Blue. You will add additional software functionality available from the open source community, including making the system see using a webcam, hear using a microphone, and speak using a speaker. You will then learn to use the new hardware capability of the BeagleBone Blue to make your robots move, as well as discover how to add sonar sensors to avoid or find objects. Later, you will learn to remotely control your robot through iOS and Android devices. At the end of this book, you will see how to integrate all of these functionalities to work together, before developing the most impressive robotics projects: Drone and Submarine.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

BeagleBone Blue and robots that can fly

You've now built robots that can move around on a wheeled structure, robots that can have legs, and robots that can sail. You can also build robots that can fly, relying on the BeagleBone blue to control their flight. There are several possible ways to incorporate the BeagleBone into a flying robotic project, but perhaps the most straightforward is to add it to a quadcopter project.

Quadcopters are a unique subset of flying platforms that have become very popular in the last few years. They utilize the same vertical lift concept as helicopters; however, they employ not one but four motor or propeller combinations to provide an enhanced level of stability. Here is a picture of just such a platform:

The quadcopter has two sets of counter-rotating propellers, which simply means that two of the propellers rotate one way and the other two...