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

Detecting pitch and roll with the accelerometer

In Chapter 12, IMU Programming with Python, we were getting a vector from the accelerometer, but we need to calculate angles to consider using it alongside the gyroscope and magnetometer. To use this to rotate things, we need to turn this vector into pitch-and-roll angles.

Getting pitch and roll from the accelerometer vector

The accelerometer describes what is going on in Cartesian coordinates. We need to convert these into a pair of pitch-and-roll angles perpendicular to each other. In Chapter 12, IMU Programming with Python, the Coordinate and rotation systems section shows roll as taking place around the x axis, and pitch as taking place around the y axis.

A crude but effective way to consider this is as two planes. When rotating around the x axis, you can take a vector in the yz plane and find its angle. When turning around the y axis, then you consider the xz plane instead. Take a look at the next diagram:

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