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

Connecting the motors to the Raspberry Pi

In this section, we will connect the motors to the Raspberry Pi. Once we have connected them, we can use code on the Raspberry Pi to control the motors and make the robot move. Figure 6.33 is the block diagram for the robot that we are building in this chapter. We will be using the Full Function Stepper Motor HAT as the controller board, calling it the Motor HAT for short.

This block diagram is similar to the type shown in Chapter 3, Exploring the Raspberry Pi. First, it starts with the Raspberry Pi, here in gray, as we've chosen that as our controller. Connected to the Pi is the Motor HAT, with instructions flowing from the Raspberry Pi to this board. The Motor HAT and its connections are highlighted as we are adding these parts in this chapter. As we build on this block diagram in later chapters, existing components will be in the color gray. Added components will be highlighted with red to show what is new. Finally, the two motors...