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

Accessing the RPi Camera with OpenCV

One of the most exciting things we can do with Raspberry Pi is recognize objects and faces by connecting it to an external USB webcam or Raspberry Pi camera (RPi camera).

To process these inputs from the camera, we will use the OpenCV libraries. As the installation of OpenCV takes a long time and involves multiple steps, this whole chapter will be dedicated to getting you up and running.

In this chapter, you will explore the following topics:

  • Installing OpenCV 4.0.0 on Raspberry Pi
  • Enabling and connecting the RPi camera to RPi
  • Capturing images and video with the RPi camera
  • Reading an image using OpenCV