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

Introduction to line following

Before we start building code, let's find out about line-following robot behaviors, where and how systems use them, and the different techniques for doing so.

What is line following?

Some robots are required to stay on specific paths within their tasks. It is simpler for a robot to navigate a line than to plan and map whole rooms or buildings.

In simple terms, line following is being able to follow a marked path autonomously. These can be visual markers, such as blue tape or a white line on a black road. As the robot drives along the line, it will continually be looking for where the line ahead is and correcting its course to follow that line.

In robot competitions, racing on lines is a common challenge, with speed being critical after accuracy.

Usage in industry

By far the most common usage of line-following behavior is in industry. Robots known as automated guided vehicles (AGVs) need to follow set paths for many reasons. These...