Book Image

Robotics at Home with Raspberry Pi Pico

By : Danny Staple
Book Image

Robotics at Home with Raspberry Pi Pico

By: Danny Staple

Overview of this book

The field of robotics is expanding, and this is the perfect time to learn how to create robots at home for different purposes. This book will help you take your first steps in planning, building, and programming a robot with Raspberry Pi Pico, an impressive controller bursting with I/O capabilities. After a quick tour of Pico, you’ll begin designing a robot chassis in 3D CAD. With easy-to-follow instructions, shopping lists, and plans, you’ll start building the robot. Further, you’ll add simple sensors and outputs to extend the robot, reinforce your design skills, and build your knowledge in programming with CircuitPython. You’ll also learn about interactions with electronics, standard robotics algorithms, and the discipline and process for building robots. Moving forward, you’ll learn how to add more complicated sensors and robotic behaviors, with increasing complexity levels, giving you hands-on experience. You’ll learn about Raspberry Pi Pico’s excellent features, such as PIO, adding capabilities such as avoiding walls, detecting movement, and compass headings. You’ll combine these with Bluetooth BLE for seeing sensor data and remotely controlling your robot with a smartphone. Finally, you’ll program the robot to find its location in an arena. By the end of this book, you’ll have built a robot at home, and be well equipped to build more with different levels of complexity.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Part 1: The Basics – Preparing for Robotics with Raspberry Pi Pico
7
Part 2: Interfacing Raspberry Pi Pico with Simple Sensors and Outputs
12
Part 3: Adding More Robotic Behaviors to Raspberry Pi Pico

Cutting styrene parts

Styrene is a great material for building robots. It is easy to find, can be cut and glued, and comes in many forms. We will be using sheets and rods. In this section, we will look at cutting this material, starting with transferring our CAD measurements. First, we look at making a good cut and refining the parts so that they are smooth.

Transferring CAD measurements to a plastic sheet

Before we cut, we will need to make markings so that we know where to cut. In the previous chapter, we made a paper template and ensured that we printed it out 1:1 on a sheet of A4 paper. You’ll need that, along with some tools, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 4.1 – Parts needed to transfer the drawing

The preceding figure shows the tools we will need, laid out and ready to use, followed by the drawing adhered onto a sheet of plastic. Prepare the following:

  • Scissors
  • Pin vise and bits
  • Metal ruler
  • Plastic...