Robots have been in use for all kinds of manufacturing and in all manner of exploration vehicles—and in many science fiction films—for a long time. The word ‘robot’ first appeared in a Czechoslovakian satirical play, Rossum’s Universal Robots, by Karel Capek back in 1920! Robots in this play tended to be human-like, and much science fiction that followed involved these robots trying to fit into society and make sense out of human emotions.
Then, General Motors installed the first robots in its manufacturing plant in 1961. Those automated single-purpose machines presented an entirely different image from the human-like robots of science fiction. As technology continues to advance, increasingly human-like robots designed for socially oriented tasks are emerging, and many types of robots co-exist today.
Regardless of a robot's outer form, building and programming most robots requires combination of mechanics, electronics, and problem-solving. What you can learn from this tutorial will be relevant to real-world robot applications. Of course there will be differences in size and sophistication, but the underlying mechanical principles, basic circuits, and programming concepts are used by engineers every day.
New uses for robots are emerging constantly. Roboticists are in demand! Get a taste of engineering, mechatronics, and software development as you construct, wire, and program the Shield-Bot, a small autonomous robot. You will assemble the robot and build DIY sensor circuits on the Board of Education® Shield for Arduino. The Shield-Bot with an infrared obstacle detection circuit built on the shield’s prototyping area is shown below.
You will start with an introduction to the Shield-Bot’s brain, the Arduino® Uno. Then, you will build, test, and calibrate the Shield-Bot. Next, you will learn to program the Shield-Bot for basic maneuvers. After that, you’ll be ready to add different kinds of sensors, and write sketches to make the Shield-Bot sense its environment and respond on its own.
Ready to start?
The Shield-Bot is a variation of the original Boe-Bot® robot with its BASIC Stamp® 2 brain, shown below. It was introduced by Parallax Inc. in 1999 and enjoyed instant popularity with schools as for their robotics, electronics, programming and physics programs. Today, the Boe-Bot Robot Kit and its accompanying text continues to be in demand for STEM courses, because PBASIC is a very easy language for a first-time text-based programming experience.
The Arduino microcontroller arrived on the scene in 2005 and its popularity grew through the DIY (do-it-yourself) hobby community. Parallax teamed up with SimplyTronics to design the Board of Education® Shield, which makes the Arduino hardware compatible with the Boe-Bot chassis. The Arduino can do the same tasks as the BASIC Stamp, though in a slightly different way, but it was still straightforward to rewrite the original Robotics with the Boe-Bot to support the Shield-Bot. This gives the Arduino hobby community the opportunity to wrap a robotics shield around an Uno. It also gives teachers a different programming language option for working with Parallax robots.
This book is designed to promote technology literacy through an easy introduction to microcontroller programming and simple robotics. Are you a middle-school student? You can be successful by following the check-marked instructions with your teacher’s support. If you are a pre-engineering student, push yourself a little farther, and test your comprehension and problem-solving skills with the questions, exercises and projects (with solutions) in each chapter summary. If you are an independent learner working on your own, go at your own pace and check in with Parallax’s Robotics forum [1] if you get stuck.
If you are an educator, feel free to contact our team at education@parallax.com for support deploying the Shield-Bot in your STEM program.
Andy Lindsay joined Parallax Inc. in 1999, and has since authored more than a dozen books, including What’s a Microcontroller? as well as numerous articles and product documents for the company. The original Robotics with the Boe-Bot that is the inspiration for this book was designed and updated based on observations and educator feedback that Andy collected while traveling the nation and abroad teaching Parallax Educator Courses and events. Andy studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering at California State University, Sacramento, and is a contributing author to several papers that address the topic of microcontrollers in pre-engineering curricula. When he’s not writing educational material, Andy does product and application engineering for Parallax.
The Parallax team assembled to prepare this edition includes: excellent department leadership by Aristides Alvarez, lesson design and technical writing by Andy Lindsay; cover art by Jen Jacobs; graphic illustrations by Rich Allred and Andy Lindsay; nitpicking, editing, and layout by Stephanie Lindsay.
Several customers helped test-drive this material. Thanks go to Gordon McComb for test-driving and technical feedback on the original chapter drafts. Special thanks also go to Matt Zawlocki and his Fall 2015 middle-school students for trying all of the example sketches with the Codebender browser-based editor.
Links
[1] http://forums.parallax.com/forumdisplay.php?53-Robotics