Chapter 1, Getting Started with the BeagleBone Blue, is designed to help the novice be successful in their first few moments with the unit. The chapter begins with a discussion of how to connect power and ends with a full system, configured and ready to begin connecting any of the amazing devices and software capabilities to fulfill almost any project dream.

Chapter 2, Programming the BeagleBone Blue, introduces, or reviews for those who are already familiar, basic Linux, editing, and programming techniques that will be useful through the rest of the book. We'll cover how to interact from the command line, how to create and edit a file using an editor, and basic Python and C programming.

Chapter 3, Making the Unit Mobile - Controlling Wheeled Movement, is based on how one of the first things you might want to do is create a robot that can move around and explore its environment. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is by adding a wheeled or tracked platform. This chapter details how to control a DC motor so that the unit can drive wheels or tracks.

Chapter 4, Avoiding Obstacles Using Sensors, explores the different types of sensors that can help you complete your projects. These sensors can help you know when you are approaching an obstacle, which direction you are moving in, or how to get from here to there.

Chapter 5, Allowing Our BeagleBone Blue to See, shows how with speech, computer vision has moved forward in amazing ways with the introduction of the webcam and the integrated camera for cell phones and laptops. This chapter provides the details of how to connect a webcam, both the hardware and the software, so that we can use it to input visual data into our system.

Chapter 6, Providing Speech Input and Output, explains how a few years ago, the concept of a computer that can talk and listen was science fiction, but today, it is becoming a standard part of new cell phones. This chapter introduces how the BeagleBone Blue system can both listen to speech and also respond in kind. This is not as easy as it sounds (pun intended), and we'll expose some basic capabilities while also understanding some of the key limitations.

Chapter 7, Making the Unit Very Mobile - Controlling Legged Movement, discusses how one of the impressive capabilities that really sets a robotic project apart is the ability to control arms and legs. This is done using servos, whose position can be controlled using our system. We'll also introduce the capability of external dedicated servo controllers that can make this job much easier.

Chapter 8, Using a GPS Receiver to Locate Your Robot, explains how knowing where we are and whether to communicate it to others or to find a path to a different location can add significant possibilities to our project. GPS has become ubiquitous in our world, and its use is now taken for granted. In this chapter, we'll show how to enable it in your own project.

Chapter 9, By Land, By Sea, By Air, goes through how now that we have a powerful toolkit, we can expand our horizons to even more possibilities.

Chapter 10, System Dynamics, discusses how we've added lots of amazing capabilities to our project. At this point, we might want to integrate several of these together in order to build complex machines. This chapter covers this process in more detail, including offering some help in the form of open source software that can make this even easier.

The hardware required is introduced at the start of each chapter.

Software list:

This book is for anyone who has been curious about using new, low-cost hardware to create robotics projects that have previously been the domain of research labs of major universities or defense departments. Some programming background is useful, but if you know how to use a personal computer, you can, with the aid of the step-by-step instructions in this book, construct complex robotics projects.

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: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."

A block of code is set as follows:

void loop() {
delay(500);                     
unsigned int uS1 = sonar1.ping();
unsigned int uS2 = sonar2.ping();
unsigned int uS3 = sonar3.ping();
Serial.print(uS1 / US_ROUNDTRIP_CM);
Serial.print(“,”);
Serial.print(uS2 / US_ROUNDTRIP_CM);
Serial.print(“,”);
Serial.println(uS3 / US_ROUNDTRIP_CM);
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

void loop() {
delay(500);                    
unsigned int uS1 = sonar1.ping();
unsigned int uS2 = sonar2.ping();
unsigned int uS3 = sonar3.ping();
Serial.print(uS1 / US_ROUNDTRIP_CM);
Serial.print(“,”);
Serial.print(uS2 / US_ROUNDTRIP_CM);
Serial.print(“,”);
Serial.println(uS3 / US_ROUNDTRIP_CM);
}

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

sudo rc_test_motors

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: "Clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen."

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