Build Your Own Robot

4 Creating a robot shell

This chapter covers

• The basics of creating interactive custom shells in Python
• Creating a command loop for moving the robot forward and backward
• Handling command arguments in shell commands
• Centralizing argument-handling logic in code shells
• Executing custom shell scripts in Python

This chapter will teach you how to create a custom interactive REPL (read–evaluate–print loop) robot shell. Shells provide a powerful interactive interface that enables direct interaction with software or, in this case, robotic hardware. They are a tried-and-true method for user interaction, and the Python standard library provides a built-in functionality to create custom shells. The chapter starts with a simple robotic shell and then progresses ...