[...]... inspiring me to love science as much as I do today, and also Guy Kawasaki for his books and e-mails, which inspired me to write this book Finally, I could not end without mentioning my friends Harry and Crissy, Ron and Sophia, Mark and Maria, Bard and Ann, Mark and Tracy, and John and Kristi I was meaning to spend more time with you this summer, and even come out and visit those who are a little more than a... parts, components, and advice during the writing of this book Fourth, I would like to thank my mother for passing on her common sense and buying me an Atari 400 in 1980, and my father for passing on his engineering smarts and helping me build the original Feynman in 2002 Fifth, I would like to thank my in-laws, Frikkie and Karen Roets, for their hospitality last Christmas (and always), and for the use... bits, one stop bit, and no flow control There are other methods of communicating with microcontrollers, notably I2C (Inter-Integrated Communication), parallel communications, Ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth just to name a few But I have chosen to use serial communications for its popularity and its extensibility with other software and devices I will show and describe 12 Java classes and 2 BASIC Stamp... be from a purely software engineering perspective I wanted to keep the text balanced between robotics and programming and not get too cute with either discipline, though from time to time I’m afraid I may have indulged myself Who Should Read This Book If you want off-the-shelf robot components, free software, and development tools, this is the book for you You can download all the software it’s GPL... while simultaneously introducing some fun and powerful programs See Figure 1 Figure 1 Book road map xvii Preston_5564Front.fm Page xviii Friday, October 7, 2005 5:14 AM xviii ■I N T R O D U C T I O N Updates and Software I will constantly be updating my site at www.scottsbots.com/definitiveguide Please stop by to visit, download new source code and examples, and get links to Internet resources I have... begin modeling your software in a way that’s both easy to use and effective 1.1 Organizing Your Behavior What does your robot do? This is the number one question people ask when I tell them I have a robot My answer five years ago would be something like, “It moves around a room and avoids the furniture.” Then people would say “Oh…,” and I would afterward talk about the technology or the software, which... waiting It could prevent what you are waiting for (like an image capture, voice command, and so on) from getting enough cycles to do anything wait() and notify() If you have two cooperating threads—say, one thread for a serial port, and another reading an image from your webcam—you could use the wait() on your serial port and then notify() on the webcam class The wait() method will cause the current thread... controlling decisions, storing data, interfacing with people, and using multimedia Though there are some chips out there that can do speech synthesis, and cameras are available that can handle some basic color and object recognition, you’ll find they have limited ability Plus, your microcontroller’s ability to interface with people, store data, and make decisions may leave a lot to be desired 11 Preston_5564C01.fm... a picture, and so on) • Stub out your class • Plan what can go wrong and how you want to deal with it After you’ve modeled your hardware and behavior, you should be ready to calculate the synchronization between the two Timing Timing in life is important; timing in robotics is mandatory If you have a larger microcontroller, I would suggest using flow control (for example, having your PC and microcontroller... all the hours I spent at the PC and downstairs with the robots when I could have been spending it with her Second, I would like to thank Steve Anglin, Simon Ritter, Sofia Marchant, Michael McGee, and Katie Stence for helping me write this book, and to readers and others at Apress who have been a joy to work with Third, I would like to thank Ken Gracey from Parallax, Inc., and Jim Frye from Lynxmotion, . Ron and Sophia, Mark and Maria, Bard and Ann, Mark and Tracy, and John and Kristi. I was meaning to spend more time with you this summer, and even come out and visit those who are a little more. today, and also Guy Kawasaki for his books and e-mails, which inspired me to write this book. Finally, I could not end without mentioning my friends Harry and Crissy, Ron and Sophia, Mark and. McGee, and Katie Stence for helping me write this book, and to readers and others at Apress who have been a joy to work with. Third, I would like to thank Ken Gracey from Parallax, Inc., and Jim