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Mastering Beaglebone Robotics
Mastering Beaglebone Robotics

Mastering Beaglebone Robotics: Master the power of the BeagleBone Black to maximize your robot-building skills and create awesome projects

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Mastering Beaglebone Robotics

Chapter 2. Building a Basic Tracked Vehicle

Now you will add the capability to move the entire project using wheels. Perhaps the easiest way to make your project mobile is to use a vehicle with two tank tracks. In this chapter, you will be introduced to the basics of controlling DC motors and use the BeagleBone Black to control the speed and direction of your tracked platform.

In this chapter, you will be doing the following:

  • Using a motor controller to control the speed of your tracked vehicle
  • Controlling your mobile platform programmatically using the BeagleBone Black
  • Using voice commands to control your tracked vehicle

Choosing the tracked platform

The first step in building your mobile robot is to pick your tracked vehicle platform. There are several manufacturers that make preassembled, tracked units. Here's an image of a preassembled, inexpensive tracked platform, made by Dagu. It's called the Dagu Rover 5 Tracked Chassis.

Choosing the tracked platform

Once you have chosen your mobile platform, you'll need to hook up a motor controller, a battery, and the BeagleBone Black.

Connecting a motor controller to control the speed of your tracked platform

The first step to make the platform mobile is adding a motor controller. This allows us to control the speed of each wheel (or track) independently. Before you get started, let's spend some time understanding the basics of motor control. The unit moves by engaging the motors. If the desired direction is straight, the motors are run at the same speed. If you want to turn the unit, the motors are run at different speeds. The unit can turn in a circle if you run one motor forward and one backwards.

DC motors are fairly straightforward devices. The speed and direction of this motor are controlled by the magnitude and polarity of the voltage applied to its terminals. The higher the voltage, the faster the motor will turn. If you reverse the polarity of the voltage, you can reverse the direction in which the motor is turning.

The magnitude and polarity of the voltage are not the only important factors when you think...

Controlling your mobile platform programmatically using the BeagleBone Black and Python

Now that you have your motor running, your next step is to programmatically control the motor controller using the BeagleBone Black. If you are going to do this remotely, log in through PuTTY. If you are doing this directly on a monitor, simply log in.

I suggest you use Python in your initial attempts to control the motor. It is very straightforward to write, run, and debug your code in Python. I am going to include the directions here for Python; you can also go to the Pololu.com website at www.pololu.com/ and find instructions for how to access the capabilities in the C programming language.

The first Python program you are going to create is shown here:

Controlling your mobile platform programmatically using the BeagleBone Black and Python

To create this program, create a directory called track in your home directory by typing mkdir track, and then type cd track. You should now be in the track directory. Now open the file by typing emacs dcmotor.py. If you are using the nano editor, open...

Summary

Now you have a basic tracked, mobile platform. You can control the unit remotely or give it voice commands. In the next chapter, you'll add some sonar and IR sensors so that you can avoid or track objects. This will allow your tracked vehicle to move around without hitting barriers.

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Description

If you want a simple guide to building complex robots, then this book is for you. You'll need some programming knowledge and experience working with mechanical systems.

What you will learn

  • Power up the BeagleBone Black to develop with both Python and C
  • Control DC motors to guide a tracked robot forward, backward, and side to side
  • Add sonar and infrared sensors to let your robot see its own way
  • Use a USB webcam to have your robot seek out and track colored objects or movements
  • Communicate with the servomotors of a robosailboat using a longrange wireless interface
  • Teach your robosailboat to navigate to a bearing and distance using GPS
  • Connect your BeagleBone Black to a flight controller to guide robots through the air
  • Make your robots autonomous and capable of controlling themselves

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Dec 22, 2014
Length: 234 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781783988914
Vendor :
BeagleBoard.org
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Concepts :
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Product Details

Publication date : Dec 22, 2014
Length: 234 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781783988914
Vendor :
BeagleBoard.org
Category :
Languages :
Concepts :
Tools :

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Frequently bought together


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Mastering Beaglebone Robotics
$48.99
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BeagleBone Robotic Projects
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Total $ 146.97 Stars icon

Table of Contents

12 Chapters
1. Preparing the BeagleBone Black Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Building a Basic Tracked Vehicle Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Adding Sensors to Your Tracked Vehicle Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Vision and Image Processing Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Building a Robot that Can Walk Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. A Robot that Can Sail Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Using GPS for Navigation Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Measuring Wind Speed – Integrating Analog Sensors Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. An Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. A Quadcopter Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. An Autonomous Quadcopter Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.4
(8 Ratings)
5 star 37.5%
4 star 62.5%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
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Massera Riccardo Feb 13, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I liked very much reading this book, it is a very simple and well written guide to develop many fully functional projects based on the BeagleBone Black board.After an introductory chapter, needed to get familiar with the BeagleBone Black board and install on it the operating system and the needed tools, every chapter will deal with a project of a specific kind of robot.Even if you do not have a strong background or you are not very familiar with DC motors, servos, controllers and other devices and parts used throughout the book, the author will guide you step by step, explaining the basic principles, the material needed, where to purchase it and how to put all together in a functioning robot.Every project in the book has a set of pictures of the components that help you understand the pinout and the connections that must be made as well as screenshots of the user interface of some tools; there are also screenshots of the code needed to program the robot and the most relevant parts of the code have an explanation statement by statement.To sum up, if you have some idea or project in mind that requires building a robot then this is the book for you.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
VizRTPhil May 05, 2016
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
This book doesn't hold your hand to the finish for these projects, but it gets you started, and points you in the right direction to continue. That's exactly what I wanted.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
CNC guy Feb 09, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I enjoyed Richard's first book, but it pales in comparison to this book. As with the first book, about the only negative thing I could say about this book is that USB is used for nearly everything despite having 66 GPIO lines available on the BBB. That said, several viable and sophisticated robotic projects are presented in this book.As the author of Hacking and Penetration Testing with Low Power Devices (Syngress, 2015), I do a lot of work with the BeagleBone Black. One of the things that I present in my book is an aerial hacking drone based on the BBB. I'm giving serious consideration to modifying the quadcopter presented in this book for use as the next version of my aerial hacking drone.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Raúl Feb 02, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
I really enjoyed reading this book and following its tutorials, it is well explained and it has some interesting topics that will help you start on your next robot, wether it is ground, air, water or even like a submarine. On the other hand, I will not recommend this book for beginners due to its target level, from intermediate to advance users, people that already have good foundations of electronics, or read previous books about a BeagleBone setup.From the book, I liked the sections about the underwater operations and the autonomous quadcopter, which generally are not explained in books of the kind "Robotics With..", although they are just a mere introduction to what can be achieved; everything will have images and screenshots of what's needed to follow the chapter and end up with a functional robot capable of operate by its own.I would totally recommend this book if you already have a BeagleBone and want to do something exciting with it.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Jaume Aragay Badia Feb 19, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
This is a good book, but be prepared to read a lot of external pages and buy extra boards and materials (the robot body for every chapter) if you intend to build the projects and learn (really basic) robotics using the BeagleBone as the center of the projects.After an intro to the BeagleBone it presents different projects, one on each chapter. I like that there are some explanations on why some things are done the way they are, but mainly it's a recipe book: "write this, then that" to install the different libraries that get the work done.The projects are nice and advanced but you learn to plug different boards to the BeagleBone to do the work instead of using the BeagleBone on it's own as some other reviewer said before me. It's the core of the projects but some work is delegated on other boards, even an Arduino.Where does it loose the fifth star?- There are mistakes on some formulas. I haven't tested the code on the projects, so I don't know about the code.- The use of screen captures for code with light grey text on a black background. It's not easy to read neither to follow to see what it's doing.If you want to know the capabilities of the BeagleBone, this is a good book. It also introduces some other technologies related to robotics and has a lot of links to external sources to get more info on those topics. So, in the end, you get a lot of info from external links in a single place, this book, than works as a launchpad to a whole world of basic robotics around the BeagleBone.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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