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

Making a line-follower test track

Since you will be making your robot follow a line, we need to start with a section of line to follow. The track will be used at the beginning to test our line detection algorithm and can then be extended to more exciting tracks when we turn on the motors and start driving along the line. What I will show you in this section is easy to make and extendable. It allows you to experiment with different line shapes and curves and see how the robot responds.

You can even experiment with different color and contrast options.

Getting the test track materials in place

The following photo shows the main materials required:

Figure 14.2 – Materials for making a test track

The photo in Figure 14.2 shows a roll of black electrical tape on a large sheet of white paper. For this section, you'll need the following:

  • Some A2 plain white paper or board.
  • Some black electrical insulation tape or painter&apos...