Throughout this book, we will build a robot and create programs for it that give the robot behaviors that make it feel intelligent and able to make decisions. We will write code to use sensors to observe the robot's surroundings, and build real-world examples of advanced topics such as vision, speech recognition, and talking.
You will see how the simple build techniques, when combined with a little bit of code, will result in a machine that feels like some kind of pet. You will also see how to debug it when things go wrong, which they will, and how to give the robot ways to indicate problems back to you, along with selecting the behavior you would like to demonstrate. We will connect a joypad to it, give it voice control, and finally show you how to plan a further robot build.
Before we start building a robot, it's worth spending a little time on an introduction to what robotics really is, or what a robot is. We can explore some of the types of robots, along with the basic principles that distinguish a robot from another type of machine. We will think a little about where the line between robot and non-robot machines are, then perhaps muddy that line a little bit with the somewhat fuzzy truth. We will then look at the types of robots that people start building in the hobbyist and amateur robotics scene.
In this chapter, we will be covering the following topics:
- What does robot mean? Where the word comes from, and what exactly defines a robot.
- Top robots, where we'll take a look at some amazing real robots.
- Robots in industry, to explore robots seen in factories and warehouses.
- Robots in the home, to show how robots are already with us in our lives.
- We'll look at competitive, educational, and hobby robots where people are using robots for fun, learning, and showing off.
