Cameron Hughes - Robot Programming: A Guide to Controlling Autonomous Robots

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Cameron Hughes
Tracey Hughes

800 East 96th Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46240

ROBOT PROGRAMMING: A GUIDE TO CONTROLLING AUTONOMOUS ROBOTS

Copyright 2016 by Pearson Education

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7897-5500-1
ISBN-10: 0-7897-5500-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015955656

First Printing: May 2016

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Cameron Hughes is a computer and robot programmer. He holds a post as a Software Epistemologist at Ctest Laboratories where he is currently working on A.I.M. (Alternative Intelligence for Machines) and A.I.R. (Alternative Intelligence for Robots) technologies. Cameron is the lead AI Engineer for the Knowledge Group at Advanced Software Construction Inc., a builder of intelligent robot controllers and software-based knowledge components. He holds a staff appointment as a Programmer/Analyst at Youngstown State University.

Tracey Hughes is a senior software and graphics programmer at Ctest Laboratories and Advanced Software Construction Inc. where she develops user interfaces and information and epistemic visualization software systems. Her work includes methods of graphically showing what robots and computers are thinking. She is on the design and implementation teams for the East-Sidaz robots at Ctest as well.

Both Cameron and Tracey Hughes are members of the advisory board for the (National Robotics Education Foundation) and members of the Oak Hill Collaborative Robotics Maker Space. They are project leaders of the technical team for the NEOACM CSI/CLUE Robotics Challenge and regularly organize and direct robot programming workshops for the Arduino, Mindstorms EV3, LEGO NXT, and RS Media robot platforms. Cameron and Tracey are two of the authors of Build Your Own Teams of Robots with LEGO Mindstorms NXT and Bluetooth, published by McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics, January 2013. They have written many books and blogs on Software Development and Artificial Intelligence. Theyve also written books on multicore, multithreaded programming, Linux rapid application development, object-oriented programming, and parallel programming in C++.

We dedicate this book to all those open source robot maker spaces that in spite of humble and meager resources continue to toil against the improbable and do amazing things with robots.

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 Brons 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.