Book Image

Hands-On Robotics Programming with C++

By : Dinesh Tavasalkar, Lentin Joseph
Book Image

Hands-On Robotics Programming with C++

By: Dinesh Tavasalkar, Lentin Joseph

Overview of this book

C++ is one of the most popular legacy programming languages for robotics, and a combination of C++ and robotics hardware is used in many leading industries. This book will bridge the gap between Raspberry Pi and C/C++ programming and enable you to develop applications for Raspberry Pi. You'll even be able to implement C programs in Raspberry Pi with the WiringPi library. The book will guide you through developing a fully functional car robot and writing programs to move it in different directions. You’ll then create an obstacle-avoiding robot using an ultrasonic sensor. In addition to this, you’ll find out how to control the robot wirelessly using your PC or Mac. This book will also help you work with object detection and tracking using OpenCV, and guide you through exploring face detection techniques. Finally, you will create an Android app and control the robot wirelessly with an Android smartphone. By the end of this book, you will have gained experience in developing a robot using Raspberry Pi and C/C++ programming.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Getting Started with wiringPi on a Raspberry Pi
4
Section 2: Raspberry Pi Robotics
8
Section 3: Face and Object Recognition Robot
12
Section 4: Smartphone-Controlled Robot

Installing the ncurses library

New curses (ncurses) is a programming library that allows developers to create text-based user interfaces. It is generally used for creating GUI-based applications or software. One of the key features of the ncurses library is that we can use it for taking inputs from keyboard keys, and controlling hardware devices on the output side. We will use the ncurses library to write programs to detect keys to control our robot accordingly. For example, if we press the up arrow, we want our robot to move forward. If we press the left arrow, we want our robot to take a left turn.

To install the ncurses library, we first have to open the command window. To install ncurses, type in the following command and press Enter:

sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev 

Next, you will be asked whether you want to install the library. Type Y (for yes) and...