BeagleBone Robotic Projects, 2nd Edition

Key Features

• Build powerful robots with the all new BeagleBone Blue
• Communicate with your robot and teach it to detect and respond to its environment
• Control walking, rolling, swimming, and flying robots with your iOS and Android mobile devices

Book Description

Beaglebone Blue is effectively a small, light, cheap computer in a similar vein to Raspberry Pi and Arduino. It has all of the extensibility of today’s desktop machines, but without the bulk, expense, or noise. And the new features of the BeagleBone Blue make it even easier to use in DIY robotics projects.

This project guide provides step-by-step instructions to allow anyone to use this new, low cost platform in some fascinating robotics projects. By the time you are finished, your projects will be able to see, speak, listen, detect their surroundings, and move in a variety of amazing ways. The book begins with unpacking and powering up the components. This will include guidance on what to purchase and how to connect it all successfully-and a primer on programming the BeagleBone Blue. Chapter by chapter, you will add additional software functionality available from the open source community, including how to make the system see using a webcam, how to hear using a microphone, and how to speak using a speaker. You will then learn to use the new hardware capability of the BeagleBone Blue to make your robots move-including wheeled and legged examples-as well as covering how to add sonar sensors to avoid or find objects, plus wireless control to make your robot truly autonomous. Adding GPS allows the robot to find itself.

Later, you will also learn to remotely control your robot through iOS and Android devices. By the end of this book you will learn how to integrate all of this functionalities so that it can all work together, before developing the most impressive robotics projects: Drone and Submarine.

What you will learn

• Power on and configure the BeagleBone Blue
• Learn Simple programming techniques to enable the unique hardware capabilities of the BeagleBone Blue
• Connect standard hardware to enable your projects to see, speak, hear, and move
• Build advanced capabilities into your projects, like GPS and sonar sensors
• Build complex projects that can fly, or go under or on the water

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Getting Started with the BeagleBone Blue
Chapter 2. Programming the BeagleBone Blue
Chapter 3. Making the Unit Mobile – Controlling Wheeled Movement
Chapter 4. Avoiding Obstacles Using Sensors
Chapter 5. Allowing Our BeagleBone Blue to See
Chapter 6. Providing Speech Input and Output
Chapter 7. Making the Unit Very Mobile – Controlling Legged Movement
Chapter 8. Using a GPS Receiver to Locate Your Robot
Chapter 9. By Land, By Sea, By Air
Chapter 10. System Dynamics