ArduinoArduino has already made it easier to build your own electronics projects. Now, the microcontroller board maker is about to enter the robotics market with what it calls the first official Arduino on wheels.
The company has teamed up with Complubot, the four-time world champions in the Robocup Junior robot soccer tournament, to create a new Arduino robotics kit.The robot’s hardware is completely open source—just like a regular Arduino board—so you can change the software controlling the robot or stack your own hardware on top of it.
The kit comes with everything you need to get going on your first robotics project: It comes the hardware, software, and documentation to build your first bot as well as use it. The kit also comes with a new version of the Arduino developer tools and a new TFT screen.
The robot itself measures about 19 centimeters in diameter (about 7.5 inches) and 10 centimeters (around 4 inches) tall, and it’s comprised of two stacked Arduino boards on wheels. Each of the Arduino boards comes equipped with a 16MHz processor as well as 32KB of flash memory.
The lower board—called the motor board—controls the movement of the machine. Meanwhile, the upper control board reads sensors and decides how to operate the machine. Of course, there’s also a USB port for programming the thing that you also use to replenish the unit’s four rechargeable AA batteries.
Arduino hasn’t announced the price or release date of the Arduino Robot just yet—but stay tuned for more details as we try and get a look at this open-source machine at the Bay Area Maker Faire this weekend.
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