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

Chapter 6: Building Robot Basics – Wheels, Power, and Wiring

In this chapter, we will start building the robot. We will choose a robot chassis kit with wheels and motors, a motor controller, and some power for the robot, talking through the trade-offs and things to avoid. We'll see how to ensure that everything fits and then build the robot. By the end of the chapter, you will have your basic robot structure ready.

Getting the trade-offs and plan right now gives you a robot you can build upon and experiment with, ensuring you know components are suitable before buying them.

In this chapter, you will learn about the following:

  • Choosing a robot chassis kit
  • Choosing a motor controller board
  • Powering the robot
  • Test fitting the robot
  • Assembling the base
  • Connecting the motors to the Raspberry Pi