Book Image

BeagleBone Robotic Projects

By : Richard Grimmett
Book Image

BeagleBone Robotic Projects

By: Richard Grimmett

Overview of this book

Thanks to new, inexpensive microcontrollers, robotics has become far more accessible than it was in the past. These microcontrollers provide a whole new set of capabilities to allow even the most inexperienced users to make amazingly complicated projects. Beaglebone 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 to allow 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 will include guidance on what to purchase and how to connect it all successfully–and a primer on programming the BeagleBone Black. Chapter by chapter, we will add additional software functionality available from the open source community, including how to make the system see using a webcam, how to hear using a microphone, and how to speak using a speaker. We then add hardware to make your robots move–including wheeled and legged examples–as well as covering how to add sonar sensors to avoid or find objects, plus wireless control to make your robot truly autonomous. Adding GPS allows the robot to find itself. Finally the book covers how to integrate all of this functionality so that it can all work together, before developing the most impressive robotics projects: those that can sail, fly, and explore underwater.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
BeagleBone Robotic Projects
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Challenges


Having a webcam connected to your system provides all kinds of additional capabilities. One of the absolute neatest devices out there is Kinect for the Xbox. This device provides not only video, but depth using an infrared device. There are individuals working to make Kinect work with the BeagleBone Black. Several good libraries enable Kinect on Ubuntu. If you'd like to try, buy a used Kinect and then go to http://speculatrix.tumblr.com/post/23043561344/kinect-on-the-beagleboard-and-ubuntu or http://kinepeutics.blogspot.com/2012/04/ethernet-working-installing-kinect.html and give it a try. Just a word of warning, this task is not for beginners. Later we will talk about the Robot Operating System, which may make it easier.

Also, you can get 3D vision with OpenCV using two cameras. There are several good places for example code, for example in the samples/cpp directory that came with OpenCV there is an example stereo_match.cpp. Also, for more code examples, you can visit http:/...