Robotics at Home with Raspberry Pi Pico. Build autonomous robots with the versatile low-cost Raspberry Pi Pico controller and Python

Danny Staple

The field of robotics is expanding, and this is the perfect time to learn how to create robots at home for different purposes. This book will help you take your first steps in planning, building, and programming a robot with Raspberry Pi Pico, an impressive controller bursting with I/O capabilities. After a quick tour of Pico, you’ll begin designing a robot chassis in 3D CAD. With easy-to-follow instructions, shopping lists, and plans, you’ll start building the robot. Further, you’ll add simple sensors and outputs to extend the robot, reinforce your design skills, and build your knowledge in programming with CircuitPython. You’ll also learn about interactions with electronics, standard robotics algorithms, and the discipline and process for building robots. Moving forward, you’ll learn how to add more complicated sensors and robotic behaviors, with increasing complexity levels, giving you hands-on experience. You’ll learn about Raspberry Pi Pico’s excellent features, such as PIO, adding capabilities such as avoiding walls, detecting movement, and compass headings. You’ll combine these with Bluetooth BLE for seeing sensor data and remotely controlling your robot with a smartphone. Finally, you’ll program the robot to find its location in an arena.By the end of this book, you’ll have built a robot at home, and be well equipped to build more with different levels of complexity.

Edge Computing Simplified. Explore all aspects of edge computing for business leaders and technologists

Perry Lea

The migration of computing to the edge is the logical progression of where computing is performed on a global scale. Edge computing is not a new paradigm but a necessary technology to address issues such as latency, service charges, reliability, connectivity, and privacy. This book walks you through the definition and architecture of edge computing systems and why they are critical in today’s ecosystem of IoT devices and an “everything connected” world.You will start your journey with an introduction to different edge computing hardware platforms, which vary by use case. From there, you’ll explore operating systems and middleware packages that manage edge devices such as Azure IoT. Then, you will explore communication systems such as near-range Bluetooth and RFID as well as long-range systems such as 5G. Networking protocols will be covered, which are the heart of edge systems. Technologies such as MQTT, which make up the backbone of edge to cloud communication, are examined. Then, you will move on to edge applications such as edge predictive AI and federated computing. We wrap up by investigating the security and vulnerability envelope of edge systems.This book is intended to quickly familiarize you with edge systems technologies and use cases, without burdening you with complicated jargon and low-level details.

Practical Autodesk AutoCAD 2021 and AutoCAD LT 2021. A no-nonsense, beginner's guide to drafting and 3D modeling with Autodesk AutoCAD

Yasser Shoukry, Jaiprakash Pandey

AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT are one of the most versatile software applications for architectural and engineering designs and the most popular computer-aided design (CAD) platform for 2D drafting and 3D modeling. This hands-on guide will take you through everything you need to know to make the most out of this powerful tool, starting from a simple tour of the user interface through to using advanced tools.Starting with basic drawing shapes and functions, you'll get to grips with the fundamentals of CAD designs. You’ll then learn about effective drawing management using layers, dynamic blocks, and groups and discover how to add annotations and plot like professionals. The book delves into 3D modeling and helps you convert your 2D drawings into 3D models and shapes. As you progress, you’ll cover advanced tools and features such as isometric drawings, drawing utilities for managing and recovering complex files, quantity surveying, and multidisciplinary drawing files using xRefs, and you'll learn how to implement them with the help of practical exercises at the end of each chapter. Finally, you’ll get to grips with rendering and visualizing your designs in AutoCAD.By the end of the book, you’ll have developed a solid understanding of CAD principles and be able to work with AutoCAD software confidently to build impressive 2D and 3D drawings.

The AI Product Manager's Handbook. Develop a product that takes advantage of machine learning to solve AI problems

Irene Bratsis

Product managers working with artificial intelligence will be able to put their knowledge to work with this practical guide to applied AI. This book covers everything you need to know to drive product development and growth in the AI industry. From understanding AI and machine learning to developing and launching AI products, it provides the strategies, techniques, and tools you need to succeed.The first part of the book focuses on establishing a foundation of the concepts most relevant to maintaining AI pipelines. The next part focuses on building an AI-native product, and the final part guides you in integrating AI into existing products.You’ll learn about the types of AI, how to integrate AI into a product or business, and the infrastructure to support the exhaustive and ambitious endeavor of creating AI products or integrating AI into existing products. You’ll gain practical knowledge of managing AI product development processes, evaluating and optimizing AI models, and navigating complex ethical and legal considerations associated with AI products. With the help of real-world examples and case studies, you’ll stay ahead of the curve in the rapidly evolving field of AI and ML.By the end of this book, you’ll have understood how to navigate the world of AI from a product perspective.

3D Environment Design with Blender. Enhance your modeling, texturing, and lighting skills to create realistic 3D scenes

Abdelilah Hamdani, Carlos Barreto

Blender is a powerful tool for creating all kinds of visual assets, but with such power comes complexity. Creating a photorealistic 3D scene seems like a Herculean task for more than 90% of 3D designers, but don’t be discouraged! 3D Environment Design with Blender will get you up and running.This practical guide helps reduce the complexity of 3D environment design, advance your Blender skills, and produce lifelike scenes and animations in a time-efficient manner. You'll start by learning how to fix the most common mistakes 3D designers make with modeling and scale matching that stop them from achieving photorealism. Next, you’ll understand the basics of realistic texturing, efficient unwrapping and achieving photorealistic lighting by turning an actual reference of a wood cabin into a realistic 3D scene. These skills will be used and expanded as you build a realistic 3D environment with natural assets and materials that you’ll create from scratch. Once you’ve developed your natural environment, you’ll advance to creating realistic render shots by applying cool camera features, and compositing tricks that will make your final render look photorealistic and pleasing to the eye.By the end of this book, you'll be able to implement modeling tricks and best practices to make your 3D environments look stunningly lifelike.

Instant 960 Grid System. Learn to create websites for mobile devices using the 960 Grid System!

Diego de Tres

Grid systems were an integral part of World War II, helping graphic designers to achieve coherency in devising a flexible system. This book exploits the vast potential of grid systems to create organized and properly aligned websites for mobile platforms.Instant 960 Grid System is a practical, hands-on guide explaining how to build a website using 960.gs targeting mobile devices, from tablets to smartphones.This book shows you how to build quick and organized websites, clearing out the confusion that surrounds column allocation. It will take you through a number of clear and practical exercises that will help you to take advantage of the 960 Grid Systems.You will also learn how to build your own portfolio, starting with the layout in Photoshop to the final product available in HTML. If you want to understand and familiarize yourself with how to use the 960 Grid System and at the same time want to prepare your website quickly to run on smartphones and tablets, then this book is for you. Not only will it cover the creation of a quickly-produced neat and concise website for different platforms, but it will also teach you how to make it responsive.

Image Processing with ImageJ. Extract and analyze data from complex images with ImageJ, the world’s leading image processing tool

Jurjen Broeke, Javier Pascau, Jose Maria Mateos-Perez

Advances in image processing have been vital for the scientific and technological communities, making it possible to analyze images in greater detail than ever before. But as images become larger and more complex, advanced processing techniques are required. ImageJ is built for the modern challenges of image processing – it’s one of the key tools in its development, letting you automate basic tasks so you can focus on sophisticated, in depth analysis.This book demonstrates how to put ImageJ into practice. It outlines its key features and demonstrates how to create your own image processing applications using macros and ImageJ plugins. Once you’ve got to grips with the basics of ImageJ, you’ll then discover how to build a number of different image processing solutions. From simple tasks to advanced and automated image processing, you’ll gain confidence with this innovative and powerful tool – however and whatever you are using it for.

Spring MVC: Beginner's Guide. Unleash the power of the latest Spring MVC 4.x to develop a complete application - Second Edition

Amuthan Ganeshan

Spring MVC helps you build flexible and loosely coupled web applications. The Spring MVC Framework is architected and designed in such a way that every piece of logic and functionality is highly configurable. Also, Spring can integrate effortlessly with other popular web frameworks such as Struts, WebWork, Java Server Faces, and Tapestry. The book progressively teaches you to configure the Spring development environment, architecture, controllers, libraries, and more before moving on to developing a full web application. It begins with an introduction to the Spring development environment and architecture so you're familiar with the know-hows. From here, we move on to controllers, views, validations, Spring Tag libraries, and more. Finally, we integrate it all together to develop a web application. You'll also get to grips with testing applications for reliability.