Book Image

Learn Robotics Programming - Second Edition

By : Danny Staple
Book Image

Learn Robotics Programming - Second Edition

By: Danny Staple

Overview of this book

We live in an age where the most complex or repetitive tasks are automated. Smart robots have the potential to revolutionize how we perform all kinds of tasks with high accuracy and efficiency. With this second edition of Learn Robotics Programming, you'll see how a combination of the Raspberry Pi and Python can be a great starting point for robot programming. The book starts by introducing you to the basic structure of a robot and shows you how to design, build, and program it. As you make your way through the book, you'll add different outputs and sensors, learn robot building skills, and write code to add autonomous behavior using sensors and a camera. You'll also be able to upgrade your robot with Wi-Fi connectivity to control it using a smartphone. Finally, you'll understand how you can apply the skills that you've learned to visualize, lay out, build, and code your future robot building projects. By the end of this book, you'll have built an interesting robot that can perform basic artificial intelligence operations and be well versed in programming robots and creating complex robotics projects using what you've learned.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
1
Section 1: The Basics – Preparing for Robotics
7
Section 2: Building an Autonomous Robot – Connecting Sensors and Motors to a Raspberry Pi
15
Section 3: Hearing and Seeing – Giving a Robot Intelligent Sensors
21
Section 4: Taking Robotics Further

Measuring the distance traveled with encoders

Encoders are sensors that change value based on the movement of a part. They detect where the shaft is or how many times an axle has turned. These can be rotating or sensing along a straight-line track.

Sensing how far something has traveled is also known as odometry, and the sensors can also be called tachometers, or tachos for short. The sensors suggested in the Technical requirements section may also show up as Arduino tacho in searches.

Where machines use encoders

Our robots use electronic sensors. Cars and large commercial vehicles use electronic or mechanical sensors for speedometers and tachos.

Printers and scanners combine encoders with DC motors as an alternative to stepper motors. Sensing how much of an arc the robot has turned through is an essential component of servomechanisms, which we saw in Chapter 10, Using Python to Control Servo Motors. High-end audio or electrical test/measurement systems use these in control...