Book Image

BeagleBone Robotic Projects - Second Edition

By : Richard Grimmett
Book Image

BeagleBone Robotic Projects - Second Edition

By: Richard Grimmett

Overview of this book

BeagleBone Blue 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 that enable 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 includes guidance on what to purchase and how to connect it all successfully, and a primer on programming the BeagleBone Blue. You will add additional software functionality available from the open source community, including making the system see using a webcam, hear using a microphone, and speak using a speaker. You will then learn to use the new hardware capability of the BeagleBone Blue to make your robots move, as well as discover how to add sonar sensors to avoid or find objects. Later, you will learn to remotely control your robot through iOS and Android devices. At the end of this book, you will see how to integrate all of these functionalities to work together, before developing the most impressive robotics projects: Drone and Submarine.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

The BeagleBone Blue and robots that can sail


Now that you've discovered that the BeagleBone Blue can guide platforms that can move on land, let's turn to a completely different type of mobile platform: one that can sail. In this section, you'll discover how to add the BeagleBone Blue to a sailing platform and utilize it to control your sail boat.

Fortunately, sailing on the water is about as simple as walking on land. First, however, you need a sailing platform. Here is a picture of an RC sailing platform that can be modified to accept control from the BeagleBone Blue:

In fact, many RC controller boats can be modified to add the BeagleBone Blue. All you need is space to put the processor, the battery, and any additional control circuitry that you might need. In this case, the sailing platform has basically two controls: a rudder that is controlled by a servo and a second servo that controls the position of the sail. These are shown next:

To automate the control of the sail boat, you need your...