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

Suggestions for further skills – 3D printing, soldering, PCB, and CNC

As you build more robots, you will want to create more elaborate or customized systems.

To build a competition-grade robot, you will need more hardware building skills.

Design skills

We've used block diagrams and simple drawings throughout this book. However, to become more serious about robot building, you'll want to design parts or check that bought parts will integrate with your robot. You will want to create cases, chassis, sensor mounts, brackets, wheel types, and any number of parts, for which Computer-Aided Design (CAD) is key.

2D design for illustration and diagrams

For 2D design and illustration, I recommend Inkscape (https://inkscape.org/). Inkscape is more artistic than CAD-oriented, but it is handy if you wish to make logos and other designs. It is quite complicated, so I recommend a book such as Inkscape Beginner's Guide, Bethany Hiitola, Packt Publishing, to get...