- Learn Robotics Programming
- Second Edition
- Why subscribe?
- Contributors
- About the author
- About the reviewers
- Packt is searching for authors like you
- Preface
- Section 1: The Basics – Preparing for Robotics
- Chapter 1: Introduction to Robotics
- Chapter 2: Exploring Robot Building Blocks – Code and Electronics
- Technical requirements
- Looking at what's inside a robot
- Exploring types of robot components
- Types of motors
- Other types of actuators
- Status indicators – displays, lights, and sounds
- Types of sensors
- Exploring controllers and I/O
- I/O pins
- Controllers
- Choosing a Raspberry Pi
- Planning components and code structure
- Planning the physical robot
- Summary
- Exercise
- Further reading
- Chapter 3: Exploring the Raspberry Pi
- Technical requirements
- Exploring the Raspberry Pi's capabilities
- Speed and power
- Connectivity and networking
- Picking the Raspberry Pi 3A+
- Choosing the connections
- Power pins
- Data buses
- General IO
- Raspberry Pi HATs
- What is Raspberry Pi OS?
- Preparing an SD card with Raspberry Pi OS
- Summary
- Assessment
- Further reading
- Chapter 4: Preparing a Headless Raspberry Pi for a Robot
- Technical requirements
- What is a headless system, and why is it useful in a robot?
- Setting up Wi-Fi on the Raspberry Pi and enabling SSH
- Finding your Pi on the network
- Setting up Bonjour for Microsoft Windows
- Testing the setup
- Troubleshooting
- Using PuTTY or SSH to connect to your Raspberry Pi
- Configuring Raspberry Pi OS
- Renaming your Pi
- Securing your Pi (a little bit)
- Rebooting and reconnecting
- Updating the software on your Raspberry Pi
- Shutting down your Raspberry Pi
- Summary
- Assessment
- Further reading
- Chapter 5: Backing Up the Code with Git and SD Card Copies
- Technical requirements
- Understanding how code can be broken or lost
- SD card data loss and corruption
- Changes to the code or configuration
- Strategy 1 – Keeping the code on a PC and uploading it
- Strategy 2 – Using Git to go back in time
- Strategy 3 – Making SD card backups
- Windows
- Mac
- Linux
- Summary
- Assessment
- Further reading
- Section 2: Building an Autonomous Robot – Connecting Sensors and Motors to a Raspberry Pi
- Chapter 6: Building Robot Basics – Wheels, Power, and Wiring
- Technical requirements
- Choosing a robot chassis kit
- Size
- Wheel count
- Wheels and motors
- Simplicity
- Cost
- Conclusion
- Choosing a motor controller board
- Integration level
- Pin usage
- Size
- Soldering
- Power input
- Connectors
- Conclusion
- Powering the robot
- Test fitting the robot
- Assembling the base
- Attaching the encoder wheels
- Fitting the motor brackets
- Fitting plastic motor brackets
- Fitting metal motor brackets
- Adding the castor wheel
- Putting the wheels on
- Bringing the wires up
- Fitting the Raspberry Pi
- Adding the batteries
- Setting up the USB power bank
- Mounting the AA battery holder
- The completed robot base
- Connecting the motors to the Raspberry Pi
- Wiring the Motor HAT in
- Independent power
- Summary
- Exercises
- Further reading
- Chapter 7: Drive and Turn – Moving Motors with Python
- Technical requirements
- Writing code to test your motors
- Preparing libraries
- Test – finding the Motor HAT
- Test – demonstrating that the motors move
- Troubleshooting
- Understanding how the code works
- Steering a robot
- Types of steering
- Steerable wheels
- Fixed wheels
- Other steering systems
- Steering the robot we are building
- Making a Robot object – code for our experiments to talk to the robot
- Why make this object?
- What do we put in the robot object?
- Writing a script to follow a predetermined path
- Summary
- Exercises
- Further reading
- Chapter 8: Programming Distance Sensors with Python
- Technical requirements
- Choosing between optical and ultrasonic sensors
- Optical sensors
- Ultrasonic sensors
- Logic levels and shifting
- Why use two sensors?
- Attaching and reading an ultrasonic sensor
- Securing the sensors to the robot
- Adding a power switch
- Wiring the distance sensors
- Installing Python libraries to communicate with the sensor
- Reading an ultrasonic distance sensor
- Troubleshooting
- Avoiding walls – writing a script to avoid obstacles
- Adding the sensors to the robot class
- Making the obstacle avoid behaviors
- First attempt at obstacle avoidance
- More sophisticated object avoidance
- Summary
- Exercises
- Further reading
- Chapter 9: Programming RGB Strips in Python
- Technical requirements
- What is an RGB strip?
- Comparing light strip technologies
- RGB values
- Attaching the light strip to the Raspberry Pi
- Attaching the LED strip to the robot
- Making a robot display the code object
- Making an LED interface
- Adding LEDs to the Robot object
- Testing one LED
- Troubleshooting
- Making a rainbow display with the LEDs
- Colour systems
- Hue
- Saturation
- Value
- Converting HSV to RGB
- Making a rainbow on the LEDs
- Using the light strip for debugging the avoid behavior
- Adding basic LEDs to the avoid behavior
- Adding rainbows
- Summary
- Exercises
- Further reading
- Chapter 10: Using Python to Control Servo Motors
- Technical requirements
- What are servo motors?
- Looking inside a servo
- Sending input positions to a servo motor
- Positioning a servo motor with the Raspberry Pi
- Writing code for turning a servo
- Troubleshooting
- Controlling DC motors and servo motors
- Calibrating your servos
- Adding a pan and tilt mechanism
- Building the kit
- Attaching the pan and tilt mechanism to the robot
- Creating pan and tilt code
- Making the servo object
- Adding the servo to the robot class
- Circling the pan and tilt head
- Running it
- Troubleshooting
- Building a scanning sonar
- Attaching the sensor
- Installing the library
- Behavior code
- Troubleshooting
- Summary
- Exercises
- Further reading
- Chapter 11: Programming Encoders with Python
- Technical requirements
- Measuring the distance traveled with encoders
- Where machines use encoders
- Types of encoders
- Encoding absolute or relative position
- Encoding direction and speed
- The encoders we are using
- Attaching encoders to the robot
- Preparing the encoders
- Lifting the Raspberry Pi
- Fitting the encoders onto the chassis
- Wiring the encoders to the Raspberry Pi
- Detecting the distance traveled in Python
- Introducing logging
- Simple counting
- Troubleshooting
- Adding encoders to the Robot object
- Extracting the class
- Adding the device to the Robot object
- Turning ticks into millimeters
- Driving in a straight line
- Correcting veer with a PID
- Creating a Python PID controller object
- Writing code to go in a straight line
- Troubleshooting this behavior
- Driving a specific distance
- Refactoring unit conversions into the EncoderCounter class
- Setting the constants
- Creating the drive distance behavior
- Making a specific turn
- Writing the drive_arc function
- Summary
- Exercises
- Further reading
- Chapter 12: IMU Programming with Python
- Technical requirements
- Learning more about IMUs
- Suggested IMU models
- Soldering – attaching headers to the IMU
- Making a solder joint
- Attaching the IMU to the robot
- Physical placement
- Wiring the IMU to the Raspberry Pi
- Reading the temperature
- Installing the software
- Troubleshooting
- Reading the temperature register
- Creating the interface
- What is VPython?
- Graphing the temperature
- Running the temperature plotter
- Troubleshooting
- Simplifying the VPython command line
- Reading the gyroscope in Python
- Understanding the gyroscope
- Representing coordinate and rotation systems
- Adding the gyroscope to the interface
- Plotting the gyroscope
- Reading an accelerometer in Python
- Understanding the accelerometer
- Adding the accelerometer to the interface
- Displaying the accelerometer as a vector
- Working with the magnetometer
- Understanding the magnetometer
- Adding the magnetometer interface
- Displaying magnetometer readings
- Summary
- Exercises
- Further reading
- Section 3: Hearing and Seeing – Giving a Robot Intelligent Sensors
- Chapter 13: Robot Vision – Using a Pi Camera and OpenCV
- Technical requirements
- Setting up the Raspberry Pi camera
- Attaching the camera to the pan-and-tilt mechanism
- Wiring in the camera
- Setting up computer vision software
- Setting up the Pi Camera software
- Getting a picture from the Raspberry Pi
- Installing OpenCV and support libraries
- Building a Raspberry Pi camera stream app
- Designing the OpenCV camera server
- Writing the CameraStream object
- Writing the image server main app
- Building a template
- Running the server
- Troubleshooting
- Running background tasks when streaming
- Writing a web app core
- Making a behavior controllable
- Making the control template
- Running the controllable image server
- Following colored objects with Python
- Turning a picture into information
- Enhancing the PID controller
- Writing the behavior components
- Writing the control template
- Writing the behavior code
- Running the behavior
- Troubleshooting
- Tracking faces with Python
- Finding objects in an image
- Converting to integral images
- Scanning for basic features
- Planning our behavior
- Writing face-tracking code
- Running the face-tracking behavior
- Troubleshooting
- Summary
- Exercises
- Further reading
- Chapter 14: Line-Following with a Camera in Python
- Technical requirements
- Introduction to line following
- What is line following?
- Usage in industry
- Types of line following
- Making a line-follower test track
- Getting the test track materials in place
- Making a line
- Line-following computer vision pipeline
- Camera line-tracking algorithms
- The pipeline
- Trying computer vision with test images
- Why use test images?
- Capturing test images
- Writing Python to find the edges of the line
- Locating the line from the edges
- Trying test pictures without a clear line
- Line following with the PID algorithm
- Creating the behavior flow diagram
- Adding time to our PID controller
- Writing the initial behavior
- Tuning the PID
- Troubleshooting
- Finding a line again
- Summary
- Exercises
- Further reading
- Chapter 15: Voice Communication with a Robot Using Mycroft
- Technical requirements
- Introducing Mycroft – understanding voice agent terminology
- Speech to text
- Wake words
- Utterances
- Intent
- Dialog
- Vocabulary
- Skills
- Limitations of listening for speech on a robot
- Adding sound input and output to the Raspberry Pi
- Physical installation
- Installing a voice agent on a Raspberry Pi
- Installing the ReSpeaker software
- Troubleshooting
- Getting Mycroft to talk to the sound card
- Starting to use Mycroft
- The Mycroft client
- Talking to Mycroft
- Troubleshooting
- Programming a Flask API
- Overview of Mycroft controlling the robot
- Starting a behavior remotely
- Managing robot modes
- Programming the Flask control API server
- Troubleshooting
- Programming a voice agent with Mycroft on the Raspberry Pi
- Building the intent
- The settings file
- The requirements file
- Creating the vocabulary files
- Dialog files
- Current skill folder
- Troubleshooting
- Adding another intent
- Vocabulary and dialog
- Adding the code
- Running with the new intent
- Summary
- Exercises
- Further reading
- Chapter 16: Diving Deeper with the IMU
- Technical requirements
- Programming a virtual robot
- Modeling the robot in VPython
- Troubleshooting
- Detecting rotation with the gyroscope
- Calibrating the gyroscope
- Rotating the virtual robot with the gyroscope
- Troubleshooting
- Detecting pitch and roll with the accelerometer
- Getting pitch and roll from the accelerometer vector
- Troubleshooting
- Smoothing the accelerometer
- Delta time
- Fusing accelerometer and gyroscope data
- Troubleshooting
- Detecting a heading with the magnetometer
- Calibrating the magnetometer
- Troubleshooting
- Testing the calibration values
- What to do if the circles aren't together
- Getting a rough heading from the magnetometer
- Combining sensors for orientation
- Fixing the 180-degree problem
- Driving a robot from IMU data
- Summary
- Exercises
- Further reading
- Chapter 17: Controlling the Robot with a Phone and Python
- Technical requirements
- When speech control won't work – why we need to drive
- Menu modes – choosing your robot's behavior
- Managing robot modes
- Troubleshooting
- The web service
- The template
- Running it
- Troubleshooting
- Choosing a controller — how we are going to drive the robot, and why
- Design and overview
- Preparing the Raspberry Pi for remote driving—get the basic driving system going
- Enhancing the image app core
- Writing the manual drive behavior
- The template (web page)
- The style sheet
- Creating the code for the sliders
- Running this
- Troubleshooting
- Making the robot fully phone-operable
- Making menu modes compatible with Flask behaviors
- Loading video services
- Styling the menu
- Making the menu template into buttons
- Making the menu start when the Pi starts
- Adding lights to the menu server
- Using systemd to automatically start the robot
- Troubleshooting
- Summary
- Exercises
- Further reading
- Section 4: Taking Robotics Further
- Chapter 18: Taking Your Robot Programming Skills Further
- Online robot building communities – forums and social media
- YouTube channels to get to know
- Technical questions – where to get help
- Meeting robot builders – competitions, makerspaces, and meetups
- Makerspaces
- Maker Faires, Raspberry Jams, and Dojos
- Competitions
- Suggestions for further skills – 3D printing, soldering, PCB, and CNC
- Design skills
- 2D design for illustration and diagrams
- 3D CAD
- Skills for shaping and building
- Machine skills and tools
- Hand skills and tools
- Electronics skills
- Electronics principles
- Taking soldering further
- Custom circuits
- Finding more information on computer vision
- Books
- Online courses
- Social media
- Extending to machine learning
- Robot Operating System
- Summary
- Further reading
- Chapter 19: Planning Your Next Robot Project – Putting It All Together
- Other Books You May Enjoy
Section 1: The Basics – Preparing for Robotics
In this section, we will learn what a robot is with examples, get an idea of what is in a robot, and get a Raspberry Pi ready for robot experiments.
This part of the book comprises the following chapters:
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