CHAPTER 1 ■ WELCOME ROBOT INVENTOR!
Onward and Upward
The next few chapters cover some important basics such as catalogs, safety, obtaining a multimeter, and
numbering.
The heart of this book is dedicated to each component, tool, and step of building a line-following
robot. It begins with a description of line-following track requirements and an inspection of the completely
assembled line-following robot. Then, each chapter revolves around a piece or stage of designing and
building the robot. You’ll be instructed on the exact purpose and alternatives to each component.
If you complete each experiment, you’ll have built your own copy of the line-following robot by the end
of the book. You hold in your hand the complete blueprints and set of instructions to actually build the robot
from scratch, without any prior knowledge of electronics, mechanics, or programming.
I chose a line-following robot as the primary subject for this book due to the overwhelming number of
requests I’ve received from beginners on that topic. By focusing on a single design, the book covers every
related detail and subject in depth. There are a number of robot books that provide an enormous range of
robot projects, but without the details necessary for a beginner to actually build any of them.
The line-following robot won’t be zooming around the track until the final chapters. However, there
are modularized circuits and milestones to provide you with accomplishments along the way. Even if you
choose not to build the line-following robot, it’s actually a perfect base model that you can rearrange to build
a robot with a completely different purpose.
The final chapters include ideas and suggestions for where to proceed from here in the wonderful world
of robotics.