Arduino

Overview:

Arduino is an open-source single-board microcontroller system, with easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, roboticists and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Being an open-source system, everybody can choose their own parts and add-on electronics in order to build cool robots.

Arduino can be used to develop interactive objects, taking inputs from a variety of switches or sensors, and controlling a variety of lights, motors, and other physical outputs. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language and the Arduino development environment . Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software on running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP).

The hardware consists of a simple open hardware design for the Arduino board with an Atmel AVR processor and on-board I/O support. The software consists of a standard programming language and the boot loader that runs on the board.

Controller:

An Arduino board consists of an 8-bit Atmel AVR microcontroller with complementary components to facilitate programming and incorporation into other circuits. An important aspect of the Arduino is the standard way that connectors are exposed, allowing the CPU board to be connected to a variety of interchangeable add-on modules (known as shields). Official Arduinos have used the megaAVR series of chips, specifically the ATmega8, ATmega168, ATmega328, and ATmega1280. A handful of other processors have been used by Arduino compatibles. Most boards include a 5 volt linear regulator and a 16 MHz crystal oscillator (or ceramic resonator in some variants), although some designs such as the LilyPad run at 8 MHz and dispense with the onboard voltage regulator due to specific form-factor restrictions. An Arduino's microcontroller is also pre-programmed with a bootloader that simplifies uploading of programs to the on-chip flash memory, compared with other devices that typically need an external chip programmer.

At a conceptual level, when using the Arduino software stack, all boards are programmed over an RS-232 serial connection, but the way this is implemented varies by hardware version. Serial Arduino boards contain a simple inverter circuit to convert between RS-232-level and TTL-level signals. Current Arduino boards are programmed via USB, implemented using USB-to-serial adapter chips such as the FTDI FT232. Some variants, such as the Arduino Mini and the unofficial Boarduino, use a detachable USB-to-serial adapter board or cable, Bluetooth or other methods. (When used with traditional microcontroller tools instead of the Arduino IDE, standard AVR ISP programming is used.)

The Arduino board exposes most of the microcontroller's I/O pins for use by other circuits. The Diecimila, now superseded by the Duemilanove, for example, provides 14 digital I/O pins, six of which can produce PWM signals, and six analog inputs. These pins are on the top of the board, via female 0.1 inch headers. Several plug-in application "shields" are also commercially available.

The Arduino Nano, and Arduino-compatible Bare Bones Board and Boarduino boards provide male header pins on the underside of the board to be plugged into solderless breadboards.

Programming:

The open-source Arduino environment makes it easy to write code and upload it to the i/o board. It's programming language is an implementation of Wiring, a similar physical computing platform, which is based on the Processing multimedia programming environment.  The Arduino software runs on Windows, Macintosh OSX, and Linux operating systems.

Body:

The Bodies used for the Arduino Robot System can be anything really. Whether it's a stuffed animal, where you put some servo motors in, your wooden wheeled chassis you want to sense walls and objects or already customized platforms, where you simply upload your code to the controller.

Below are typical platforms used with Arduino:

Mobility:

You can use pretty much any hobby actuators, servo motors, linear or rotating motors to move your robot creations.

See the samples below.

Modules:

A variety of modules can be added to the Arduino System to react to the robot's environment, like distance sensors, ultrasonic or sound sensors, LED lights, different I/O Boards and others.