Tech Explorations™ Arduino Robotics with the mBot

Tech Explorations™ Arduino Robotics with the mBot

English | MP4 | AVC 1280×720 | AAC 48KHz 2ch | 5 Hours | 1.87 GB

An introduction to robotics with the world’s friendliest learning robot

This course will introduce you to the mBot, the world’s friendliest educational robotics platform. The mBot is an Arduino-based, two-wheel robot that comes with build-in sensors and actuators, and that you can program using Scratch, a graphical programming language.

The mBot is also extensible, with a lot of components available that you can use to build your own robotic creations.

In this course, I will show you how to assemble the mBot, discuss the additional hardware options, and demonstrate how to program it on your tablet and your Windows or Mac OS computer.

The main project of the course involves programming the mBot to follow an arbitrary black line on the floor. In this project we must combine our robot’s sensors and actuators efficiently to enable it to stay on the line while it travels on it as quickly as possible.

At first glance, you may think that getting a robot to follow a line is easy. That’s not true for a robot.

As the programmer, you must “teach the robot” to do something that to a human is intuitive. You need to extract the intuitive understanding of how to follow a line and convert it into code.

The required hardware is the mBot itself, and a computer (Windows or Mac OS). You can purchase an mBot direct from its manufacturer, Makeblock, or from your local reseller. You can download the software from free from the Makeblock website.

What you’ll learn

  • Program the mBot on the tablet device
  • Program the mBot on the PC
  • Use the mBot sensors and actuators
  • Program the mBot using the Scratch language
  • Come up with your own fun experiments for the mBot
Table of Contents

About this course
1 What is this course about
2 Hardware and software that you will need
3 Study guide

Meet the mBot
4 Introduction
5 Parts in the box
6 Assembly Chassis, motors, wheels, sensors
7 Assembly mCore tour, Bluetooth module
8 Assembly Wiring, batteries, controller
9 Assembly testing
10 Additional hardware
11 Software options

Programming the mBot using a tablet
12 Introduction
13 Demonstration of MakeBlock
14 Demonstration of mBlockly
15 Demonstration of mBlock

Programming the mBot on the PC using mBlock
16 Introduction
17 Install mBlock on your computer
18 A quick look at Scratch, the graphical programming language
19 Create and upload your first program
20 Motor control
21 Moving left, right, backwards

Getting more out of the mBot programming structures, more sensors
22 Introduction
23 The Loop
24 The distanceproximity sensor
25 More experimentation with the distance sensor
26 The If and If…else control structure
27 Introducing the buzzer

Create the line follower program
28 Introduction
29 Introducing the line sensor
30 Adding the motors to the line follower program
31 Stopping at the end of the line with the proximity sensor
32 Implement a U-turn at the end of the line
33 Using a button to start and stop
34 Creating custom block (functions)

Other things you should know
35 Introduction
36 Restoring the firmware (so that you can control the mbot from the iPad)
37 Restoring the default program (so that you can control the mbot with the remote

Mini project

Conclusion
38 What’s next
39 Other courses by Peter Dalmaris