chapter six

6 Creating robot web apps

 

This chapter covers

  • Creating a desktop and mobile friendly web application to control robots
  • Measuring web application performance using web browser tools
  • Creating dynamic pages using Tornado templates
  • Enabling enhanced web logging to detect web request failures

This chapter will teach you how to build a web application to control your robot. The application will be created such that it will work equally well whether you access it from a desktop or mobile phone. The full range of robot movements will be available through the application as well as commands that can be used to measure the network performance of the application end to end. As we build this application we will learn useful techniques for measuring application performance as well as detecting and fixing certain types of web request failures.

6.1 Hardware Stack

Figure 6.1 shows the hardware stack with the specific components used in this chapter highlighted. In this chapter we can use the mouse as a human interactive device to interact with the robot through our web app.

Figure 6.1 Hardware stack: The DC motors will be controlled over the network using a web interface

6.2 Software Stack

6.3 Moving robots forward and backward over the web

6.3.1 Creating a basic web application

6.3.2 Detecting failed requests

6.3.3 Moving robots forward with web apps

6.4 Creating a full movement web app

6.4.1 Creating the full movement application

6.4.2 Web Interface Design

6.4.3 Measuring application performance in the browser

6.5 Summary