Create complex and exciting robotic projects with the BeagleBone Black

OverviewGet to grips with robotic systemsCommunicate with your robot and teach it to detect and respond to its environmentDevelop walking, rolling, swimming, and flying robots

In Detail

Thanks to new, inexpensive microcontrollers, robotics has become far more accessible than it was in the past. These microcontrollers provide a whole new set of capabilities to allow even the most inexperienced users to make amazingly complicated projects. Beaglebone is effectively a small, light, cheap computer in a similar vein to Raspberry Pi and Arduino. It has all of the extensibility of today's desktop machines, but without the bulk, expense, or noise.

This project guide provides step-by-step instructions to allow anyone to use this new, low cost platform in some fascinating robotics projects. By the time you are finished, your projects will be able to see, speak, listen, detect their surroundings, and move in a variety of amazing ways.

The book begins with unpacking and powering up the components.This will include guidance on what to purchase and how to connect it all successfully-and a primer on programming the BeagleBone Black. Chapter by chapter, we will add additional software functionality available from the open source community, including how to make the system see using a webcam, how to hear using a microphone, and how to speak using a speaker. We then add hardware to make your robots move-including wheeled and legged examples-as well as covering how to add sonar sensors to avoid or find objects, plus wireless control to make your robot truly autonomous. Adding GPS allows the robot to find itself. Finally the book covers how to integrate all of this functionality so that it can all work together, before developing the most impressive robotics projects: those that can sail, fly, and explore underwater.

What you will learn from this bookUnbox, power up, and configure the BeagleBone black with UbuntuInstall speech recognition software to issue voice commands to your projectsSet up a webcam and a computer vision toolkit for distinguishing objectsCommunicate with external motors to enable you robotics projects to move in a variety of waysProcess audio signals like music or other soundsAdd GPS capability to your system so it will know where it isUse the building blocks you have learned to create complex robotic projects that can combine all of these features and more

Approach

Develop practical example projects with detailed explanations; combine the projects in a vast number of ways to create different robot designs, or work through them in sequence to discover the full capability of the BeagleBone Black.

Who this book is written for

This book is for anyone who is curious about using new, low-cost hardware to create robotic projects that have previously been the domain of research labs, major universities or Defence departments. Some programming experience would be useful, but if you know how to use a personal computer, you can use this book to construct far more complex systems than you would have thought possible.

Key Features Get started with Raspberry Pi Zero and put all of its exciting features to useCreate fun games and programs with little or no programming experienceLearn to use this super-tiny PC to control hardware and software for work, play, and everything elseBook Description

Raspberry Pi Zero is half the size of Raspberry Pi A, only with twice the utility. At just three centimeters wide, it packs in every utility required for full-fledged computing tasks. This practical tutorial will help you quickly get up and running with Raspberry Pi Zero to control hardware and software and write simple programs and games. You will learn to build creative programs and exciting games with little or no programming experience. We cover all the features of Raspberry Pi Zero as you discover how to configure software and hardware, and control external devices. You will find out how to navigate your way in Raspbian, write simple Python scripts, and create simple DIY programs. What you will learn Understand how to initially download the operating system and set up Raspberry Pi ZeroFind out how to control the GPIO pins of Raspberry Pi Zero to control LED circuitsGet to grips with adding hardware to the GPIO to control more complex hardware such as motorsAdd USB control hardware to control a complex robot with 12 servosInclude speech recognition so that projects can receive commandsEnable the robot to communicate with the world around it by adding speech outputControl the robot from a distance and see what the robot is seeing by adding wireless communicationDiscover how to build a Robotic hand and a QuadcopterAbout the Author

Richard Grimmett has always been fascinated by computers and electronics since his very first programming project that used Fortran on punch cards. He has a bachelor's and master's degree in electrical engineering and a PhD in leadership studies. He also has 26 years of experience in the radar and telecommunications industries, and even has one of the original brick phones. He now teaches computer science and electrical engineering at the Brigham Young University, Idaho, where his office is filled with his numerous robotics projects. Table of Contents Getting Started with Raspberry Pi ZeroProgramming Raspberry Pi ZeroAccessing the GPIO Pins on Raspberry Pi ZeroBuilding and Controlling a Simple Wheeled RobotBuilding a Robot That Can WalkAdding Voice Recognition and Speech – A Voice Activated RobotAdding Raspberry Pi Zero to an RC VehiclePlaying Rock, Paper, or Scissors with Raspberry Pi ZeroAdding Raspberry Pi Zero to a Quadcopter

Master the power of the BeagleBone Black to maximize your robot-building skills and create awesome projectsAbout This Book Create complex robots to explore land, sea, and the skiesControl your robots through a wireless interface, or make them autonomous and self-directedThis is a step-by-step guide to advancing your robotics skills through the power of the BeagleBoneWho This Book Is For

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. In Detail

Robots are quickly bursting from the world of science fiction right into our own living rooms. The small-but-mighty BeagleBone Black embedded processor provides the power and capability to program your own robotic projects using its complete Linux development environment.

Mastering BeagleBone Robotics lets you push your creativity to the limit through complex, diverse, and fascinating robotic projects right from scratch. Start off simple by building a tracked robot that moves, sees its environment, and navigates barriers. Go aquatic with a sailing robot that controls its rudder and sail, senses the direction of the wind, and plots its course using GPS. Then plunge beneath the surface of the waves as you create and control a robotic submarine to explore the world underwater with a webcam link. Walk on all fours with a limbed creation, and take to the skies as you create a quadcopter, then use the BeagleBone Black to make it autonomous and fly in its own direction using its own power.

As a Web Developer who uses Flash, SitePoint’s "The Flash Anthology" will take your skills to the next level. Whether you want to create Flash navigation elements, do advanced animation, create text effects, work with video & audio or Flash forms, this book is for you.

Who should buy The Flash Anthology?

If you have some Flash experience, even if it’s only going through Macromedia’s Flash Tutorials, The Flash Anthology is for you. This book will help you create better, more innovative, fun, and practical effects. Steve Grosvenor, the author of The Flash Anthology, has compiled solutions to the most common Flash problems, plus some experimental effects, that are sure to inspire, motivate and educate.

For your next project, get The Flash Anthology and:

- Learn to use best-practice ActionScript code
- Find out how to easily find and fix errors in your code
- Learn to work with external data sources and Flash Forms
- Plus get over 60 recipes for effects covering everything from navigation to forms

Broken down in chapters by subject and fully indexed, you can easily use the book as a reference or as an idea book for your next Website. Each solution is completely customizable and comes with suggested modifications so you can adapt them to your own projects.

Use The Flash Anthology as inspiration for applications or projects, or keep it on your desk as a handy reference to dozens of the most common text, video, sound, animation and navigation ActionScripts.

The Flash Anthology is divided into ten chapters, making it easy for you to access best-practice examples of the different types of effects that you’re likely to use. The tips, solutions, ActionScript and examples are divided as follows:

- Navigation: Planning navigation, including examples of good and bad design plus half-a-dozen examples that you can adapt to your own projects

- Animation: Timeline vs. ActionScripted animation, creating animation libraries plus practical examples of easy, intermediate and advanced animation in Flash

- Text Effects: When to use them, when not to use them, plus examples of over a dozen of the most common effects including blurring, fading, sliding and natural motion effects

- Sound Effects: Information on when its appropriate to use sound, tips on selecting sound clips and practical examples of triggering sound events, panning and Doppler effects and much more

- Video: Capturing, importing and editing movies, creating a mini-movie viewer, optimization methods and other must-read how-to tips with examples

- Flash Forms: How to design Flash Forms, validating data, handling form data and lots of practical form examples

- Working with external data: An overview of working with external data and working with server-side pages, creating a simple blog reader application, storing preferences.

- Trapping & Handling Errors including common causes for errors, the debugging process, and using the Flash debugger

- And lots more, including using Cascading Style Sheets in Flash, producing charts in Flash, getting your site indexed in the search engines, and more.

Like to build websites in the wild with your MacBook? This concise hands-on guide introduces you to the ideal editor: Coda 2. Rather than clutter your screen with shell access, a separate CSS editor, and a version control app, you’ll discover how Coda’s "one-window web development" bundles everything into one neat application. Take Coda on a trial run, then learn step-by-step how to configure each feature to fit your working style. You’ll find out firsthand how Coda will save you time and effort on your next project. Get to know Coda’s workflow by building a sample siteDelve into features such as the tab bar, path bar, sidebar, and Sites viewSet up your own development environment—and dig deeper into the editor’s optionsGet tips for taking full advantage of the text and MySQL editorsCreate a Git or Subversion repository for source control managementLearn the finer points of sharing project documents across a networkDiscover the built-in reference books, and learn how to extend Coda

"Modern Compiler Design" makes the topic of compiler design more accessible by focusing on principles and techniques of wide application. By carefully distinguishing between the essential (material that has a high chance of being useful) and the incidental (material that will be of benefit only in exceptional cases) much useful information was packed in this comprehensive volume. The student who has finished this book can expect to understand the workings of and add to a language processor for each of the modern paradigms, and be able to read the literature on how to proceed. The first provides a firm basis, the second potential for growth.

Key Features Implement various deep-learning algorithms in Keras and see how deep-learning can be used in gamesSee how various deep-learning models and practical use-cases can be implemented using KerasA practical, hands-on guide with real-world examples to give you a strong foundation in KerasBook Description

This book starts by introducing you to supervised learning algorithms such as simple linear regression, the classical multilayer perceptron and more sophisticated deep convolutional networks. You will also explore image processing with recognition of hand written digit images, classification of images into different categories, and advanced objects recognition with related image annotations. An example of identification of salient points for face detection is also provided. Next you will be introduced to Recurrent Networks, which are optimized for processing sequence data such as text, audio or time series. Following that, you will learn about unsupervised learning algorithms such as Autoencoders and the very popular Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN). You will also explore non-traditional uses of neural networks as Style Transfer.

Finally, you will look at Reinforcement Learning and its application to AI game playing, another popular direction of research and application of neural networks. What you will learn Optimize step-by-step functions on a large neural network using the Backpropagation AlgorithmFine-tune a neural network to improve the quality of resultsUse deep learning for image and audio processingUse Recursive Neural Tensor Networks (RNTNs) to outperform standard word embedding in special casesIdentify problems for which Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) solutions are suitableExplore the process required to implement AutoencodersEvolve a deep neural network using reinforcement learningAbout the Author

Antonio Gulli is a software executive and business leader with a passion for establishing and managing global technological talent, innovation, and execution. He is an expert in search engines, online services, machine learning, information retrieval, analytics, and cloud computing. So far, he has been lucky enough to gain professional experience in four different countries in Europe and managed people in six different countries in Europe and America. Antonio served as CEO, GM, CTO, VP, director, and site lead in multiple fields spanning from publishing (Elsevier) to consumer internet (Ask.com and Tiscali) and high-tech R&D (Microsoft and Google).

Sujit Pal is a technology research director at Elsevier Labs, working on building intelligent systems around research content and metadata. His primary interests are information retrieval, ontologies, natural language processing, machine learning, and distributed processing. He is currently working on image classification and similarity using deep learning models. Prior to this, he worked in the consumer healthcare industry, where he helped build ontology-backed semantic search, contextual advertising, and EMR data processing platforms. He writes about technology on his blog at Salmon Run. Table of Contents Neural Networks FoundationsKeras Installation and APIDeep Learning with ConvNetsGenerative Adversarial Networks and WaveNetWord EmbeddingsRecurrent Neural Network — RNNAdditional Deep Learning ModelsAI Game PlayingConclusion