Assignment 3: Linux and Networking

The networking component of this assignment will help you understand how to communicate with your drone. Fundamentally, robots are computers that are linked through networks. In robotics, accounting for networking allows both more robust and more efficient design. The networking part of this assignment describes how to use basic networking with a focus on concepts most useful to robotics.

Networking may not seem like a topic in robotics, but it is one of the most common reasons robots fail to work. If you cannot connect your base station to the robot, you cannot see the robot’s status; you cannot see sensor output; you cannot send actuation commands. Moreover networks in the wild can be set up in a variety of diverse ways that may or may not allow your base station to connect to your robot. For example, Brown’s default guest network does not allow peer-to-peer connections, so even if you get your base station and the robot connected on that network, you still cannot talk to the robot.

As a result, it is essential to be familiar with basic networking concepts in order to make your drone, or any robot, work. This unit asks you to think and learn about some networking concepts. We also cover helpful linux commands.

This assignment is comprised of two parts: Introduction to Linux (Part 1), Networking (Part 2). Please complete all parts of this assignment. You can do this assignment in the vscode shell on your drone, or on any machine with Python and the requisite shell commands.