Book Image

Learn Robotics Programming - Second Edition

By : Danny Staple
Book Image

Learn Robotics Programming - Second Edition

By: Danny Staple

Overview of this book

We live in an age where the most complex or repetitive tasks are automated. Smart robots have the potential to revolutionize how we perform all kinds of tasks with high accuracy and efficiency. With this second edition of Learn Robotics Programming, you'll see how a combination of the Raspberry Pi and Python can be a great starting point for robot programming. The book starts by introducing you to the basic structure of a robot and shows you how to design, build, and program it. As you make your way through the book, you'll add different outputs and sensors, learn robot building skills, and write code to add autonomous behavior using sensors and a camera. You'll also be able to upgrade your robot with Wi-Fi connectivity to control it using a smartphone. Finally, you'll understand how you can apply the skills that you've learned to visualize, lay out, build, and code your future robot building projects. By the end of this book, you'll have built an interesting robot that can perform basic artificial intelligence operations and be well versed in programming robots and creating complex robotics projects using what you've learned.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
1
Section 1: The Basics – Preparing for Robotics
7
Section 2: Building an Autonomous Robot – Connecting Sensors and Motors to a Raspberry Pi
15
Section 3: Hearing and Seeing – Giving a Robot Intelligent Sensors
21
Section 4: Taking Robotics Further

What is Raspberry Pi OS?

Raspberry Pi OS is the choice of software we use to drive the Raspberry Pi, an OS that our code will run in. It is the Raspberry Pi Foundation's official OS and comes with software prepared to make working with the Raspberry Pi easier. Raspberry Pi OS can support a full desktop or a minimal command line and network-only system.

Raspberry Pi OS is based on the Debian Linux distribution. Debian is a collection of software set up to run together, giving lots of functionality and many possibilities. Linux distributions like this are the basis of many internet servers, mobile phones, and other devices. The OS's software is optimized for the Raspberry Pi hardware, namely the kernel and drivers, which are made specifically for it. It also has some neat ways to configure the specialized features that Raspberry Pi users might need.

We will use it in a more minimal way than a desktop, forgoing the keyboard, mouse, and monitor support. This minimal version...