Slouching Towards Skynet: Building a Robotic Car With Python and Raspberry Pi
Abstract
Robots are taking over the world. This talk provides an introduction to robotics with Raspberry Pi and Python, as the speaker explains a journey to build a robot that chases a ball around. Topics include electricity, hardware, ultrasonic sensors, image processing, and relevant Python libraries.
Talk Description
Introduction
- Speaker bio (1 minute)
- Inspirations for the talk
- Quick Overview (scaffolding) of the talk and what we will cover (2 minutes)
What is Robotics (5 minutes)
- Basic Definition
- An interdisciplinary field.
- Robotics role in the world today - social and technological
- You should learn about robotics.
The requirements for robot locomotion (1 minute)
- Diagram of robot (power + form factor + set of instructions)
Power (6 minutes)
- Electricity
- Electrical Motors
- Explain hooking a DC to the chassis
Set of Instructions and How All These Things Connect (5 minutes)
- Raspberry Pi
- GPIO
- The Python gpizero library
Making the robot locomote (5 minutes)
- Conceptualizing Movement in 2-D space.
- Gpizero library introduction
Additional Hardware: Ultrasonic Sensors (5 minutes)
- Obstacle detection with ultrasonic sensors
- Programming for the Sensor With gpizero
Additional Hardware: A Camera (10 minutes)
- Attaching the Camera
- Image Processing: RGB and HSV
- Programming for the Camera with picamera, OpenCV, and other libraries
- Chasing the Ball
Wrap-up (2-3 minutes) and Questions
- Type: talk
- Expected length: 40min
- Intended audience: All