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 a heading with the magnetometer

We saw in Chapter 12, IMU Programming with Python, how to plot a vector from the magnetometer, and how magnetic metal (such as bits of steel and iron) will interfere with it. Even the pin headers on the IMU board interfere. We can calibrate to compensate for this.

Getting X, Y, and Z components aren't that useful; we want a heading relative to a magnetic North. We can see how to use this for precise turns.

This section needs a space, with very few magnets present. Laptops, phones, speakers, and disk drives interfere with this sensor. Use a map compass to reveal magnetic fields in your space. I recommend making the standoff stalk on the robot as long as the cable allows, putting more standoffs in; the robot's motors have a strong magnetic field of their own.

Please avoid starting with the robot facing South—this will cause some odd results, which we will investigate and fix later. Starting with the robot roughly North...