Acknowledgments

We are greatly indebted to Valerie Cannon who played the role of “on location” robo-journalist and photographer for us at the 2015 DARPA Robotics Search and Rescue Challenge at the Fairplex in Pomona, California.

We would like to thank our two interviewees for our “Bron’s Believe It or Not” interviews. We also thank Ken Burns from Tiny Circuits of Akron, Ohio, who provided us with a personal tour of his Arduino manufacturing space and endured our probing interview questions. Portions of the material on Arduino robotics hardware, especially the Phantom X Pincher Robot Arm, would not have been possible without the time and interview given to us from Kyle Granat at Trossen Robotics.

We are also indebted to the NEOACM CSI-Clue robotics challenge team who acted as a sounding board and early test bed for many of the robot example programs in this book. We are fortunate to be part of Ctest Laboratories, which provided us with unfettered access to their East Sidaz and Section 9 robots. The East Sidaz and Section 9 met every challenge we could throw at them. A special thanks to Pat Kerrigan, Cody Schultz, Ken McPherson, and all the folks at the Oak Hill Collaborative Robotics Maker Space who allowed us to subject them to some of our early robot designs. A special thanks to Howard Walker from Oak Hill Collaborative who introduced us to the Pixy camera. Thanks to Jennifer Estrada from Youngstown State University for her help with the Arduino-to-Bluetooth-to-Vernier magnetic field sensor connection and code. A special thanks goes to Bob Paddock for offering his insight and expertise on sensors and giving us a clear understanding of the Arduino microcontroller. A shout-out to Walter Pechenuk from IEEE Akron, Ohio, chapter for his subtle, cool, and calm interaction and responses as we went on endlessly about our approach to autonomous robotics. Further, this simply could not have been written without the inspiration, tolerance, and indirect contribution of many of our colleagues.