You're reading from Learn Robotics Programming Build and control AI-enabled autonomous robots using the Raspberry Pi and Python

Product type Paperback

Published in Feb 2021

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781839218804

Length 602 pages

Edition 2nd Edition

Languages

Python

Tools

Raspberry Pi

Concepts

Robotics

Author (1):

Danny Staple

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Table of Contents (25) Chapters

Preface

1. Section 1: The Basics – Preparing for Robotics

2. Chapter 1: Introduction to Robotics FREE CHAPTER

3. Chapter 2: Exploring Robot Building Blocks – Code and Electronics

4. Chapter 3: Exploring the Raspberry Pi

5. Chapter 4: Preparing a Headless Raspberry Pi for a Robot

6. Chapter 5: Backing Up the Code with Git and SD Card Copies

7. Section 2: Building an Autonomous Robot – Connecting Sensors and Motors to a Raspberry Pi

8. Chapter 6: Building Robot Basics – Wheels, Power, and Wiring

9. Chapter 7: Drive and Turn – Moving Motors with Python

10. Chapter 8: Programming Distance Sensors with Python

11. Chapter 9: Programming RGB Strips in Python

12. Chapter 10: Using Python to Control Servo Motors

13. Chapter 11: Programming Encoders with Python

14. Chapter 12: IMU Programming with Python

15. Section 3: Hearing and Seeing – Giving a Robot Intelligent Sensors

16. Chapter 13: Robot Vision – Using a Pi Camera and OpenCV

17. Chapter 14: Line-Following with a Camera in Python

18. Chapter 15: Voice Communication with a Robot Using Mycroft

19. Chapter 16: Diving Deeper with the IMU

20. Chapter 17: Controlling the Robot with a Phone and Python

21. Section 4: Taking Robotics Further

22. Chapter 18: Taking Your Robot Programming Skills Further

23. Chapter 19: Planning Your Next Robot Project – Putting It All Together

24. Other Books You May Enjoy

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Choosing the parts

Throughout this book, we have looked at the tradeoffs between different kinds of sensors, different chassis kits, controllers, and so on. These are tradeoffs on weight, complexity, availability (you don't want an irreplaceable part), and cost, covered in detail in Chapter 6, Building Robot Basics – Wheels, Power, and Wiring.

If a particular kit inspired the robot—for example, SpiderBot was inspired by a hexapod kit; yours could be a robot arm or caterpillar track kit—this will likely constrain the other part choices you need to make. I'd need to support 18 servo motors; however, I had a 16-motor controller available, so I elected to use two input/output (I/O) pins of the central controller for the remaining two servos. This added software complexity, though.

Another tradeoff was the main controller. I knew that I'd want SpiderBot to be Wi-Fi-enabled, but it wasn't going to be doing visual processing, so a small, cheap...