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We're not even close to being able to have an AI that would be able to adapt to a new opponent with a new weapon system or form of motion.

Funny that didn't stop the class in my robotics course from making autonomous battle robots (from lego) even though we were forbidden to do so. We managed to make robots that could find each other (pan with an ultrasound distance sensor until something pops out) and fight (like sumo mainly) running their AI on Handy Boards (http://www.handyboard.com/) basically while the professor wasn't looking. So long as the tasks are clearly stated before people start developing I cant think why their should be a problem...

If your going to have a challenge why not make a real one?

What are you trying to teach the students? If you get a bare microcontroller like a PIC then you quickly have to spend a lot of time teaching electronics so that the students know how to properly connect hardware to collect sensor data and drive motors. You end up explaining different communications protocols (what is this RS232-TTL chip for, what is SPI and I2C, etc.) which may or may not be the purpose of the class. If the purpose is to "build a robot that does task x" then you're better off getting a kit of some sort that has some built-in interfaces for sensor inputs and motor outputs. I've had many years of experience with the Handyboard and must suggest it has a good choice, though $200-250 may be a bit pricey to get started. Oregon State and Atmel have teamed up to produce a system for their EE curriculum that looks promising, though you would have to get in contact with them to see how you might be able to purchase their boards in bulk (they have a website you can order some parts from, base kit is $105). If you want to teach "this is how you program a robot" then you can pick up any programmable robotics set and get going quickly. For younger students that haven't programmed before something more graphical may be better for them (Mindstorms for example, though you don't seem to want this sort of thing). Any way you go you'll probably end up teaching teamwork skills (and you should probably throw in some documentation skills also). There is a freshman program developed around the Handyboard that teaches such skills at Ohio State (dislaimer: I was a TA for this program) which has quite a few materials you may find useful. In summary, make sure you decide on your curriculm, then pick a controller that best fits into both that and your budget.

We use the Handyboard http://handyboard.com/ which is kinda old-tech with a Motorola 68HC11, but is very beginner friendly. There is a free C compiler available http://www.botball.org/educational-resources/ic.ph p that is also very easy to use. With the expansion board there are many interfaces: analog inputs, digital in/out, sonar, motor drivers, servos, LCD screen.

If you are more of a hardware hacker (and less of a kid), check out the handyboard, which is a robotics platform used in may robotics classes at the tertiary level. It is super flexible and fun.

An alternative I've used for robotics courses is the MIT Handyboard (http://handyboard.com/) - far more scope for creativity if you're mostly interested in the electronics aspect of it all. The smaller versions (Cricket?) might suit better if not.

They're programmed in what's effectively C with a special library. I found it trivial to pick up.

The CNN article implies that this competition was "invented" by Kaman...Botball is a much more challenging competition, has been around for a number of years, enjoys NASA sponsorship, and makes use of multi-controller robots (including the incredibly versatile, open-source Handy Board controller). Plus, Botball is open to high-school students as well as middle school.

I had a robotics class in high school last year and it was rather fun. We used http://handyboard.com/ Handyboards for the brains of most of the robots we made. They aren't like mindstorms in that a bit of work is still required to use different servers and motors with it. The handyboards are programmed with IC which is Interactive C. IC is somewhat open source and has a linux version so we used it. The only downside is that they are rather pricy at $200 a unit. Some other robots we made were simple touch sensor robots using breadboards and servos(Servo motors are nice you should get lots of them as they can be used for just about everything!). This project came from a book called 'Mobile Robotics'. For another project we got an old floppy and cdrom drive and had to make a robot to win a race with them. Everything had to come from the floppy and cdrom drive all the wire/motors/switchs we only got tools to work with. This project was the most fun and likely the easiest for the teacher to manage as he didn't need to provide parts. You could do variations or even make the project more complex. One thing that helped a lot is that we started out working on simple projects and at a slow pace so that everyone in the class could participate regardless of having had an electronics course before. We often built robots in stages where we would make a robot with a touch sensor first and then go back and add light sensors and so on.

Really Logo wasn't intended to teach programming (though of course it did that). It was intended to teach math, and algorithmic thinking, and thinking in general. And, paired with the right teacher and an interested pupil, it's really great at that. Without realizing it, a child can end up learning not just geometry (through the turtle graphics), but a lot of pre-algebra. I think programming is a far more accessible way to introduce algebra than the traditional techniques; even young children can understand variables in programs, when the declarative variables that are used in mathematics are much more challenging.

It's also a better language than many of "teaching" languages, like Basic. It's an old-school version of Lisp, with a little tweak to avoid the parenthesis. And don't be fooled by things that call themselves Logo when they are just turtle graphics. Turtle graphics are cool, but just a piece of the equation. (Though not-so-coincidentally, Python has built-in turtle graphics).

If you are really interested in programming as education, I might recommend the book Mindstorms, which is a classic about some of the theory behind teaching with Logo. It's not a practical guide, though many of those also exist.

If you are looking for a Logo implementation, on Windows I would recommend Elica, MSWLogo, and UCBLogo, in that order. On Mac or Linux, you can use UCBLogo, Turtle Tracks (a cross-platform Java implementation), or on Mac one of a number of (rather expensive) commercial Logos. If you are a programmer and feel like fiddling alongside your child, you might try my project PyLogo, which is cross-platform and written in Python, but quite rough around the edges. Or if you want something that is Logo, but pretends to be a general-purpose scripting language, look at Rebol. Or for a slightly-lame but functional embedded robot Logo, Cricket Logo. Or for older people, NetLogo is a massively-multitasking implementation to use to play around with autonomous entities (e.g., ant simulations). NetLogo is kind of the successor to StarLogo.

For more information on Logo, you can look at the Logo Foundation, or get in touch with many helpful users in the LogoForum Yahoo Group.

KISS and BEST are two other nationally-recognized robotics programs. While KISS uses Legos, don't be fooled -- you have two embedded systems to work with (Lego's RCX and the MIT-developed Handy Board microcontroller), and the designs get pretty outrageous. BEST has students building robots from scratch.

The Handyboard is a favorite of robot hobbiests and researchers. We use them in our Mobile Robotics class at Uni. The full-on Handyboard is about $299, though. A somewhat reduced version of the Handyboard, the Handy Cricket is available for $99 from Gleason Research with a sensor/motor kit included. If you check the Handyboard page, there are several other vendors, including ones that sell unassembled kits for less, if you're not afraid of a little (okay, a fair bit of) soldering.

I recommend using Lego to build the body of the robot as it's highly reconfigurable, cheap, and fun to play with even without the robot parts.

The Handyboard is a favorite of robot hobbiests and researchers. We use them in our Mobile Robotics class at Uni. The full-on Handyboard is about $299, though. A somewhat reduced version of the Handyboard, the Handy Cricket is available for $99 from Gleason Research with a sensor/motor kit included. If you check the Handyboard page, there are several other vendors, including ones that sell unassembled kits for less, if you're not afraid of a little (okay, a fair bit of) soldering.

I recommend using Lego to build the body of the robot as it's highly reconfigurable, cheap, and fun to play with even without the robot parts.

<a href="http://www.handyboard.com">Handy Board</a>

My neighbor has got himself an E-Maxx. Super fun. Fastest ready-to-run electric truck I've played with. Puts my modified Traxxas Stampede to shame (though it rolls awfully easy).

On the topic of robotic trucks... I mounted a Handy Board on my stampede (The Handy Board is a 68HC11-based controller board designed for experimental mobile robotics; created by Fred Martin of MIT), along with a Sony infrared proximity detector... and had it wandering around my basement. Fun stuff, but one detector is not enough... it kept running into stuff at 10 MPH; some sort of sonar range finder would be better...

There was some stuff they didn't really mention on their site that people might be interested in. They used the Handyboard as their microcontroller system. You can learn more about it here.

http://www.handyboard.com/

This would also mean they are using Interactive C (a stripped down version of C) for their programming.

Other posters who suggest that you do some studying are not unwise. Digital logic is straightforward when you have a background in combinatorial logic and a few other concepts up to about 25MHz. Designs with that level of clock speed can easily be wire-wrapped. Beyond that, you are going to have to start considering high-speed design issues when you route your boards.

One of the most rewarding things that I did as an undergrad was design my own SBC around a Motorola 68HC11 to run the mechanics for a 3-D scanning system that interfaced to an SGI workstation.

I really think that if this interests you, you should pursue it . The current 'state of the hobby' is now so advanced that it is somewhat mind numbing what can be done with some FPGAs and some software to layout a PCB.

The Motorola Dragonball family (or it's decendants) are an excellent 68000 core family of chips that are easy to use and you can design a modestly useful machine around them with a classic buss / memory mapped IO architecture without working up too much of a sweat.

Other posters who suggest that you do some studying are not unwise. Digital logic is straightforward when you have a background in combinatorial logic and a few other concepts up to about 25MHz. Designs with that level of clock speed can easily be wire-wrapped. Beyond that, you are going to have to start considering high-speed design issues when you route your boards.

One of the most rewarding things that I did as an undergrad was design my own SBC around a Motorola 68HC11 to run the mechanics for a 3-D scanning system that interfaced to an SGI workstation.

I really think that if this interests you, you should pursue it . The current 'state of the hobby' is now so advanced that it is somewhat mind numbing what can be done with some FPGAs and some software to layout a PCB.

The Motorola Dragonball family (or it's decendants) are an excellent 68000 core family of chips that are easy to use and you can design a modestly useful machine around them with a classic buss / memory mapped IO architecture without working up too much of a sweat.

On the topic of high school robotics...

I was involved in a high school robotics competition called Botball, organized by the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics. This program involved constructing autonomous robots out of Lego Technic parts, using Interactive C to write programs to control them.

The controller used was MIT's Handyboard, and the Botball game involved collecting ping pong balls and other such items to be depostited in a goal to score points (with various complexities coming into play). One part of the competition was head-to-head; two teams' robots then battled it out to see who could score more points.

The Botball program offers high school students exposure to engineering and software development concepts, as well as problem solving with specific goals and deadlines, all in a team setting. With competition at the regional and national levels, the program is challenging and rewarding for students. And it's a lot of fun too.

FYI, the Handyboard has a real-time clock in it which is accessible from the software. You can read it, reset it (it resets when the board is reset) etc. As the batteries where down, the clock timing doesn't change, but the motor speed does changes as the batteries where down. The U-shaped slot sensors make good wheel encoders when combined with the LEGO disk that contains six holes. This disk fits in the sensor's slot and can be used to count wheel rotations. Several teams did this to calculate where their vehicle moved.