Chapter 1: Your Boe-Bot's Brain - Parallax Boe-Bot Student Manual

Chapter 1: Your Boe-Bot's Brain

Parallax, Inc's Boe-Bot™ robot is the focus of the activities, projects, and contests in this
book. The Boe-Bot and a close-up of its BASIC Stamp
microcontroller brain are shown in Figure 1-1. The BASIC Stamp 2 module is both
powerful and easy to use, especially with a robot.
The activities in this text will guide you through writing simple programs that make the
BASIC Stamp and your Boe-Bot do four essential robotic tasks:
1. Monitor sensors to detect the world around it
2. Make decisions based on what it senses
3. Control its motion (by operating the motors that make its wheels turn)
4. Exchange information with its Roboticist (that will be you!)
The programming language you will use to accomplish these tasks is called PBASIC, which
stands for:
•
Parallax - Company that invented and makes BASIC Stamp microcontrollers.
•
Beginners - Made for beginners to use to learn how to program computers
•
All-purpose - Powerful and useful for solving many different kinds of problems
•
Symbolic - Using symbols (terms that resemble English word/phrases)
• Instruction - To instruct a computer how to solve problems
• Code - In terms that you and the computer understand
Chapter 1: Your Boe-Bot's Brain · Page 1
®
2 programmable
Figure 1-1
BASIC
Stamp® 2
module on a
Boe-Bot™
robot.