Jeff Cicolani - Beginning Robotics with Raspberry Pi and Arduino: Using Python and OpenCV

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the books product page, located at www.apress.com/978-1-4842-6890-2 . For more detailed information, please visit http://www.apress.com/source-code .

Robotics does not have to be difficult. In this book, I introduce you to the field of robotics. The journey will be challenging; its intended to be. But by the end of the book, you will have hands-on exposure to many of the fundamentaland not so fundamentalaspects of robotics. You will work with hardware, assemble and solder a circuit board, write code in two programming languages, install and configure a Linux environment, and work with computer vision. Everything else you do with robots will be an extension of the lessons learned in this book.

This book is for those who are new to electronics and IoT, those who have never used a Raspberry Pi or Arduino separately, let alone together.

This book is for the hobbyist who is interested in learning a little more about working with robots. Perhaps youve built a few circuits with an Arduino or a custom home entertainment system with a Raspberry Pi, and now you are curious about what goes into building a robot. You will learn how these two devices work together to provide very powerful capabilities.

This book is for the entrepreneur who needs to learn more about technology; someone who doesnt necessarily have the time to read through many different books on Arduino, Raspberry Pi, electronics, or programming; someone who is looking for a broad yet condensed introduction to some of the fundamentals.

This book is also for the student who wants to take their robot-building experience beyond bricks and puzzle-piece programming, someone who wants to work with hardware and software that more closely resembles what they might see in college or in the professional world.

No assumptions are made about experience or background in technology. As you go through the chapters, you may find parts that you are already familiar with and you can skip ahead. But if you are new to these topics, I try to provide you with a quick but easy introduction.

You start by learning about the Raspberry Pi and how to work with it. You download and install the Raspbian operating system (OS) and then configure the Pi for our project. The goal is to set up your system to be able to easily access your robot and write your code directly on it.

Once you are able to access your Pi remotely, in Chapter , you delve into programming with Python. I show you how to write simple programs on the Raspberry Pi. I also take you beyond the basics and cover some intermediate topics, such as modules and classes. This is one of the longest chapters since there is a lot of material to cover.

From there, you learn how to interface the Raspberry Pi with external electronics, such as sensors and LEDs, through the Pis GPIO (general-purpose input/output) header. Chapter discusses the different ways of addressing the pins on the header, some of the functionality exposed through the header, and how to use an ultrasonic rangefinder to detect objects. This gets you ready for the next chapter, which introduces the Arduino.

In Chapter , you connect the Arduino to the Raspberry Pi. I discuss some of the reasons you want to do this. I show you how to work with the Arduino IDE (integrated development environment) to write programs. I cover serial communication between the two boards and how to pass information back and forth between them. We do this using the same ultrasonic rangefinder used in the previous chapter.

Chapter has you turning motors with your Raspberry Pi. You use a special board called a hat, or plate, to control the motors. This is where I introduce another skill that you will inevitably need in robotics: soldering. The header and terminals need to be soldered onto the board that was selected for this purpose. The nice thing about soldering headers and terminal blocks is that its hard to damage anything, and you will get plenty of practice.

Chapter is where we bring it all together. You build the robot, and I discuss some of the physical characteristics of robotics. I cover some of the design considerations that you will need to keep in mind when you design your own chassis. Although I am listing a specific chassis kit for this project, you do not need to use the same one. In fact, I encourage you to explore other options to find the one that is right for you.

In Chapter , I introduce another type of sensorthe IR sensorand I show you how to use a very common control algorithm called a PID (proportional, integral, and derivative) controller. I talk about the various types of IR sensors and where you want to use them. This chapter also discusses what PID control is and why you want to use it.

Chapter is about computer vision, where you see the true power of the Raspberry Pi. In this chapter, I cover an open source package called OpenCV. By the end of this chapter, your little robot will be chasing a ball around the table.