Hands-On ROS for Robotics Programming

Why does a robot need a CPU?

Apart from the fact that this book's goal is to get you some hands-on experience with ROS—and for that, you need a Linux OS to install the software on—if you really want to create a smart robot, you need the processing capacity to run compute-intensive algorithms, and that is what a CPU such as Raspberry Pi provides.

Why is this computation needed? Because a smart robot has to integrate information from the environment with the logic of the task at hand to be able to complete it successfully. Let's use the example of carrying one object from its current position to a target destination. To do so, devices such as a laser distance sensor, a 3D camera, and/or a GPS provide the robot with information from the environment. ...