front matter

 

preface

I love learning how to create things with computers, whether these are video games or web applications. When I became a father, I also started creating fun crafting projects with my daughters. As they grew, our projects became increasingly ambitious, until we started building robots together. One of these fun robotics projects was creating a robot that could drive around and fetch books from a high bookshelf my daughter couldn’t reach. The books would come flying off the shelf at high speed, and she would have to either catch or dodge them.

I presented the code and process of creating these projects at different Python conferences, much to the amusement of the audience. This is what opened up the idea of writing a book on creating robotics from scratch for people like me with no prior background in robotics. All you would need is to be familiar with Python and have a passion for learning new and fun ways of building interesting projects with the language.

There were a number of qualities that I wanted to make sure this book had. These were based on what I felt worked best when learning a new topic, and I also wanted to address certain shortcomings of some of the learning material already out there:

acknowledgments

about this book

Who should read this book?

How this book is organized: A roadmap

About the code

liveBook discussion forum

Software/Hardware requirements

about the author

about the cover illustration