Book Image

Learn Robotics Programming

By : Danny Staple
Book Image

Learn Robotics Programming

By: Danny Staple

Overview of this book

We live in an age where the most difficult human tasks are now automated. Smart and intelligent robots, which will perform different tasks precisely and efficiently, are the requirement of the hour. A combination of Raspberry Pi and Python works perfectly when making these kinds of robots. Learn Robotics Programming starts by introducing you to the basic structure of a robot, along with how to plan, build, and program it. As you make your way through the book, you will gradually progress to adding different outputs and sensors, learning new building skills, and writing code for interesting behaviors with sensors. You’ll also be able to update your robot, and set up web, phone, and Wi-Fi connectivity in order to control it. By the end of the book, you will have built a clever robot that can perform basic artificial intelligence (AI) operations.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)

Adding a pan and tilt mechanism

We are now going to build and add a pan and tilt servo mechanism to our robot. This will be like a head for our robot to mount sensors on it. A pan and tilt mechanism allows a sensor (or anything else) to be moved through two axes under servo motor control.

Pan is to turn left or right. Tilt is to tilt up or down. The following photo shows a pan and tilt mechanism:

A pan and tilt mechanism from a common kit

If you can, get a kit that looks like the previous photo, if not, you will have to look at the vendors details for instructions to build it—ensure it is the type that uses two servo motors. We will build the kit, mount it onto our robot, and plug it into the controller.

Our robot block diagram will look like the following:

Block diagram of the robot with servo motors added
...