Chapter 7. Using GPS for Navigation
Your sailboat can sail, but you might want it to sail to a specific location. One of the coolest devices that you can connect to your robot is a GPS location device. It will allow your sailboat to know where it is, and then you can also know the bearing and distance to a new location.
In this chapter, you will be doing the following things:
- Connecting the BeagleBone Black of your sailboat to a GPS device so that it can know where it is
- Accessing the GPS programmatically so that you can use this position to determine the bearing and distance to a new location
Beginning with a GPS tutorial
Before you get started, let's start with a brief tutorial on GPS. GPS, which stands for Global Positioning System, is a system of satellites that transmits signals. GPS devices use these signals to calculate a position. There are a total of 24 satellites transmitting signals all around the earth at any given moment, but your device can only see the signal from...
