I'm a senior CS major, and I have decent programming skills. Obviously I want to start simple for my first bot, but I also want to get a microcontroller powerful enough that I can keep using it as I do more and more complex stuff.
Am I correct in saying that the micrcontroller used in the $50 robot tutorial really isn't good for anything beyond basic line following and object avoiding types of things? If I ultimately would like to create a robot that has fairly sophisticated AI features, I'm going to need a more powerful chip correct?
I guess overall my concern is that the $50 robot is meant for people who have very little mechanics (me), electronics (me), and programming (not me) experience. I'm worried that I'll build it, get it programmed, and then be bored 5 minutes later because all I can program that chip to do is follow lines or avoid objects. Of course I'm going to start out doing something like that, everyone has to start simple, but I want to be able to do more complex things w/out having to buy a new chip.
Does my concern make sense or is it completely unfounded? Can I do more with that little 8-bit chip than I realize?
In any case, I would like to build my own augmented microcontroller (just for the experience of learning how to do it). Is a augmented microcontroller utilizing a more powerful chip (such as the ARM7 or ARM9) going to be alot harder to build than the augmented microcontroller that is built in the $50 robot tutorial or would it be about the same difficulty level? I'm guessing it would be about the same, it would just be a matter of using a different wiring diagram for the pins on the microcontroller.