This book shows you how anyone can start building their own robot—no special soldering or electronic skills required. All you need is some basic Python know-how to get started. From scratch, you'll go hands-on with DC motors, touch sensors, custom shell scripting, joystick controls, and even face detection for your robot friend.
About the technology
You can build your own robot! With this book, you'll use readily-available hardware and author Marwan Alsabbagh's clear step-by-step instructions to create a robot that moves, manipulates objects, and responds to its environment. Along the way, you'll learn some serious skills like computer vision, networking, and the basics of robotics programming.
About the book
Build Your Own Robot is a project-based guide that takes you from spinning your first DC motor to programming a mobile robot that you can control from your phone or computer. You'll write simple Python code to help your new friend spin, move, and find its way. You'll even teach it to track faces and fetch snacks. Plus, a helpful hardware purchasing guide makes it easy to find exactly what you need to get started!
What's inside
About the reader
Examples use simple Python code. No special skills or expensive tools required.
About the author
Marwan Alsabbagh is a seasoned software developer, who has studied mathematics and computer science at McGill University.
The technical editor on this book was Alexander Ryker.
Table of Contents
1 What is a robot?
2 Getting started
3 Driving the robot
4 Creating a robot shell
5 Controlling robots remotely
6 Creating robot web apps
7 Joystick-controlled robots
8 Keyboard-controlled camera
9 Face-following camera
10 Robotic QR code finder
11 Building a snack-pushing robot
A Hardware purchasing guide
B Configuring the Raspberry Pi
C Robot assembly guide
D Mocking the CRICKIT library