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

Chapter 8. Using a GPS Receiver to Locate Your Robot

Based on the previous projects, you now have mobile robots that can move around, accept commands, see, and even avoid obstacles. This project will help you locate your robot while it moves, which can be useful for a robot that is fully autonomous. The robot is mobile, but let's not let it get lost. You're going to add a GPS receiver so that you can always know your location.

In this chapter, you will learn:

  • How to connect the BeagleBone Blue to a GPS device
  • How to access GPS programmatically and determine how to move to a location

In this project, you'll need a GPS device. There are a lot of options and they come with many different interfaces, but because we want to avoid using a soldering iron or other complex connection processes, we're going to choose one with a USB interface. Here is an image of a device I have used for some of my projects:

The model number is ND-100S from GlobalSat. It is small, inexpensive, and supports Windows, Apple...