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)

Choosing a controller

We want to be able to control our robot with something that is handheld and wireless. Trailing a wire to our robot would make little sense. Having seen how our robot drives in Chapter 7, Drive and Turn - Moving Motors with Python, we will want a control system that affects the wheels in a direct way.

One way to do this would be to use a Bluetooth joypad. There are a large number of these on the market, which may require specialist drivers to read. Bluetooth has a habit of dropping pairings at inopportune times.

However, you already have a handheld device, in your pocket, your phone. It has a touch screen, capable of reading finger movements. With a bit of the right code, you can display the video between controller bars, creating a kind of robotic periscope you can drive around and see (it's quite tricky to drive on camera - harder than overhead)....