If your new to this and want to avoid the deeper electronics I suggest buying a basic atom(
www.basicmicro.com) and perhaps a ABB(
www.lynxmotion.com) first. That will give you a board with spots for motors, servo's, sensors, and DB9. After that, build a platform for it.. something like HDPE works good for starting, or even like an erector set. Build either 4 cheap servo's and modify them to run as motors(see the 50$ robot tutorial for instructions) or just buy dc motors. Either way works.. attach those to the base and power them. Program the basic atom and board to move forward when the button on the board is pressed down. Once you have it moving backwards,forwards, and turning via buttons on the board program it run from its serial port, and attach that port to your computer. then the hard part:
Write a program on your computer to communicate cmomands via serial. Something like this:
if serial input = "11111111" go forward.
if serial input = "10101010" go backwards.
if serial input = "11110000" turn right 90 degrees
if serial input = "00001111" go left 90 degrees.
Thats very basic.
and BAMN! There you go, a program on your computer to control the robot.
OR! You can get a SSCII-32 from lynxmotions.com and just use that.. but it can't be autonamous with that method because that is controlled COMPLETLY by the pc..
These are just vague ideas.. let me know if you want more details or less. I am working on a somewhat similiar program, just a different method of locomotion
