The hardware and software requirements for this chapter are as follows:

• Python 2.7 or 3.5, with NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, and scikit-learn installed.
• ROS Kinetic Kame.
• A computer running Linux for development or a virtual machine running Linux under Windows. Ubuntu 16.04 is used for the examples and illustrations.
• A Raspberry Pi 3 or similar single board computer (BeagleBone Black, Odroid, or similar). We are not using the GPIO or special interfaces on the Pi 3, so there is not a lot of RasPi-specific code.
• An Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller.
• A Pololu Micro Maestro Servo Controller x6.
• An Arduino development environment. This can be installed either on the control station (a laptop running Windows or a Linux laptop), or on the Raspberry Pi.
• The TinMan robot hardware was purchased from AliExpress and was called Track Cars Creeper Truck Crawler Kits with...

The word robot entered the modern language from the play R.U.R. by the Czech author, Karel Capek, which was published back in 1920. Roboti is supposed to be a Czech word meaning forced servitude. In the play, an industrialist learns how to build artificial people – not mechanical, metal men, but made of flesh and blood, who emerge from a factory fully grown. The English translation of the name as Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.) introduced the word "robot" to the world.

In our limited definition of robots as meaning mobile machines that have sensors and interact with their environment, there is a fairly standard collection of components...

At this point, I want to spend a bit more time on the idea behind the subsumption architecture, and point out some specifics of how we will be using this concept in the design of our robot project. Many of you will be familiar with the concept from school or from study, and so you can look at my diagram and then move on. For the rest of us, let's talk a bit about this biologically inspired robot concept.

Subsumption architecture was originally described by Dr. Rodney Brooks, a professor at MIT, who would later help found iRobot Corporation and invent the Baxter Robot. Rodney was trying to develop analogues of insect brains in order to understand how to program intelligent robots. Robots before this time (1986) were very much single-threaded machines that pretty much only did one thing at a time. They read sensors, made decisions and then acted &...

To match the examples in this book, and to have access to the same tools that are used in the code samples, you will have to set up three environments:

• A laptop or desktop computer: This will run our control panel, and also be used to train neural networks. I used a Windows 10 computer with Oracle VirtualBox supporting a virtual machine running Ubuntu 16.14. You may run a computer running Ubuntu or another Linux operating system by itself (without Windows) if you want. Several of the AI packages we will use in the tutorial sections of the book will require Ubuntu 16 or later to run. We will load ROS on this computer. I will also be using a PlayStation-type game controller on this computer for teleoperation (remote control) of the robot.
• Raspberry Pi 3: Also running Ubuntu Linux (you can also run other Linux versions, but you will have to make any adjustments between...

The TinMan robot is based on a kit I found from a Chinese company named Robo-Soul. It is called the TK-6A Robot base with a 6-DOF Robot arm. The kit arrived in a timely fashion via post, but arrived with no instructions whatsoever. Also, the pictures on the website did not match the kit, either, so I have basically no guide to putting this thing together, other than trial and error. I will provide an abbreviated version here in the book that will get you through the rough parts. A complete version will be on the website for the book at http://github.com/fgovers/ai_and_robots.

The best way to start with a kit this complex, particularly when you don't have instructions...

This chapter covered several important topics. It started with some of the basics of robotics, for readers who needed a bit more background. We talked about common robot parts, such as sensors, computers, and motors/actuators. We discussed the subsumption architecture in more depth and showed how it helped the robot arbitrate between responding to different events and commands.

The next section covered the software setup for running the robot, including the offboard development environment and the onboard Raspberry Pi 3 computer environments. We set up the ROS and installed the Python tools.

The final section covered the hardware construction of the example robot, TinMan, with its tank-tread base and robot arm composed of servo motors. We showed how to wire the power supply up and connect all of the components to the Raspberry Pi 3 controller. We installed the ROS software...

1. Name three types of robot sensors.
2. What does the acronym PWM stand for?
3. What is analog-to-digital conversion? What goes in and what comes out?
4. Who invented the subsumption architecture?
5. Compare my diagram of the three-layer subsumption architecture to the Three Laws of Robotics postulated by Isaac Asimov. Is there a correlation? Why is there one, or why not?
6. Do you think I should have given our robot project – TinMan – a name? Do you name your robots individually, or by model?
7. What is the most important environment variable in ROS?

Brooks, Rodney. Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI. MIT Press, 1999. Boston, MA