Line following – the “Hello, World!” of robotics

Building a mobile robot that can follow a dark line on a bright background is a great project to put much of our learning to use, without being overly complicated. By the end of this chapter, you will have a robot that can autonomously follow a line, completely on its own. You will see feedback control, DC motor control, and Bluetooth communication in action, all in one project. Even though this robot is not complicated, and we will only demonstrate a very basic line-following algorithm, it gives you a great platform to experiment with many more ideas. You can improve the line-following algorithm to make it go as fast as possible or you can add additional sensors to give your robot more capabilities. You can add a camera gimbal so that your robot can use the camera for more than just line following. You can develop a ground station to view live telemetry from your robot, or you can add an RC receiver and add an RC...