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It all depends on what kind of robot you want to do. A car? A humanoid? A drone?

How do you want to control it?

What features do you want to have?

If you are new, I advise that you start with the Arduino, it’s easy to program, their community is very helpful, and you learn a lot along the way.

If you want a robot that can do more complicated things, like object detection/vision processing, or machine learning, you need more than a microcontroller. If so, I advise you get a Raspberry Pi. The Pi costs around $35, and the Pi zero costs $5(If you can find one in stock, that is). Raspberry Pi’s are very capable devices. Another alternative is the Beagleboard.

Building a robot is actually very easy and fun. I think that everyone should try doing it. Good luck with your project!

1 Like
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You don’t have to go through PCB production either, you can use a breadboard. Easy to use.

23

Thanks Gary,

I shall have a look into Parallax. I have no experience with either Parallax or Arduino so I’ll take a look at which I find best and then make a decision based on which I think I’d prefer to work with.

Thanks again.

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Thanks. I never realised there were problems with plastic motor or those from eBay, so I’ll remember this.

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Thanks. I never really knew that Raspberry Pi could be used for robots. I always thought it was just simple circuits and computer addons.

Cheers

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No problem. Can you describe what type of robot you are working on? Maybe we can help!

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Just a basic humanoid robot, for basic movement like moving arms and legs. I would then like to add to it like cameras and sensor and such.

Thanks in advance

28

you should use servos or steppers for the robot. To control steppers, you can buy motor controllers or build your own stepper circuit for cheap. Servos work with PWM(Pulse width modulation), and work by just plugging it into power, ground, and the pwm pins. If you are using more motors than PWM pins on your board, then you can buy a hat(for raspberry pi), a shield(for arduino stuff), or a cape(for beagleboards). You will probably need at least 10-13 motors to build a decent humanoid robot, so you can either buy multiple boards that work together, or a shield/hat/cape. I would recommend starting off with an Arduino Mega, since it has 14 pwm pins(AFAIK), and that would eliminate the need for a shield. If you want to make the robot smarter, you can get a raspberry pi to receive camera input for image processing/object tracking, and make it communicate with the Mega.

Another way to control it would be to get a beagleboard. The beagleboard is a good mix between the Pi and the Arduino, since it provides some pretty decent processing power, and it also has plenty of pins. The PWM cape for the BeagleBoard controls up to 32 servos, which is a bit overkill, but still useful. You also don’t necessarily need a usb mouse, keyboard, ethernet/internet, or monitor, since you can use it by connecting it via usb, but you can use it as a computer if you want to.

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Arduino and Raspberry pi also have great communities online to help you out if you have trouble.

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I think its mainly because of the community that Arduino has brought together. I had tried to get into electronics since i was 8, but I didn’t know anything much about microcontrollers and programming until last year. I had tried to use a microcontroller(I think it was the ti launchpad) at a science event, and I was completely lost, the community wasn’t very helpful either. Most K-12 kids that are passionate about electronics start with an Arduino, at least the ones I have met so far. I personally found Arduino, and Raspberry Pi’s resources and communities very helpful to improving my skills. Arduino and Raspberry Pi have also gained a lot more publicity in the education and maker community over the past few years.

31

Take a look at Wiring. It came out way before Arduino and started out with a similar purpose. I haven’t met anyone familiar with that board.

32

Robots are awesome. I’m working on a highly modified version of the poppy 3d printed robot. It uses dynamixel servos which are high torque and high price. I have made an adaptor case to fit standard servos measuring 40mm x 20mm x 38mm I’m using an arduino uno, lynx motion ssc32 servo controller and an old smart phone. So far it’s just a computer controlled marionette as I’m not great with programming. I may follow more closely to the halley ambassador robot. It uses an arduino mega and a breadboard/custom pcb to connect everything. Code is available on github. Great projects. Then there are many smaller ones available aimed more to beginners. Mobbob is another great simple robot using a smartphone some 3d pri ted components and arduino or bluno. Really cool little biped telepresense Droid.

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A humanoid robot might not be the best way to go as a starter robot.
If you just want the optical look then yes, however if you want it to actually move you will have to work with various sensors like gyros and accelerometers to make sure that it doesn’t topple over, or can at least detect when it fell over.

34

Have a look at this open source 3D printed Humanoid Robot. All build designs, STL files, and walkthrough available for free:

inmoov.fr

I’m building one now…

Szikka