I haven't built a robot, but am very interested, and I would like to know about quality parts that would be beneficial to keep on hand. I'm an electrical engineering student, so I already have a lot of the major devices necessary to build and analyze circuits... breadboard, oscilloscope, resistors, capacitors, etcetera. The only problem I have is that I don't know what I should be buying for building robots, I would like to order as much of it as possible from one place and minimize shipping costs. From research and some help from friends I have settled on an ATMega168 for my microcontroller, so I know that is one part I will definitely be buying. Along with that I am interested in the Sharp IR sensor, but not sure how many of those would be good to get, as I obviously haven't built a robot yet =/. If anyone has good suggestions for servos, motors, hbridge(s) / materials, along with the materials to build a programmer that would be great!
Thanks!