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My first Arduino was an Ardweeny. It costs $9.95. So far it's done everything I've wanted it to do.
https://solarbotics.com/product/kardw/

You can even go cheaper and more harcore if you want:
http://shrimping.it/blog/shrimp/

Is price really such a problem?

Arduino and Raspberry Pi are not competators in any way. They target two different markets whereby they have very slight overlap for hobbiests. The Pi simply can not compete with Arduino/AVR on the low end and Arduino/AVR can not compete with RPi on the highend. There's only a tiny intersection between the two and that's likely only because you have one or the other whereby a "close enough" solution is satisfactory.

AVR/Arduino has solutions in the $1-$6 range, if you want to use an inexpensive ISP and break out the coresponding pins on your bare bones or really bare bones controller. Not to mention, the pins are easy to access with a multitude of more pins available. It also has some capabilities which are simply not available without a Gert board, which makes the pi all the more expensive. Furthermore, an RPi is basically as barebones as you're going to see - at least for a while - if ever. Whereas for the AVR/Arduino solution makes it easy to transplant your Arduino project into a barebones $3-$9 project.

Furthermore, these two projects are really far and away much more complimentary technologies than they are competators. Basically, let the RPi do the heavy CPU lifting and the AVR's do the GPIO and bit flipping. Its a combination made in heaven.

I use these: http://www.solarbotics.com/products/kardw/

A nice 10$ kit/board. Pretty easy to solder together.

You don't have to restrict yourself to VGA output or Ethernet connectivity. You can get something like an Ardweeny for 10$, using a cheap LCD for your screen and an Xbee for connectivity. When you get down to the micro sized stuff, you aren't really dealing with "programs" anymore. More likely libraries and classes. If you do want something beefier that plugs into the wall, the beagle board you're looking at would be perfect. Arduino sized stuff rarely uses a full keyboard. More likely you'd have a few buttons to activate the functions you are wanting to perform. Which is really all you need for gadgets.

You can get an Ardweeny here: http://www.solarbotics.com/products/kardw/
But you'll need an FTDI cable (USB->serial) to program it. You can google that and buy the cheapest available.

Lately i've been using the Ardweeny from solarbotics: http://www.solarbotics.com/products/kardw/

It's only 10$ and very quick to assemble. It felt wasteful using a full size arduino in a permanent project, so i moved to these. You just need an FTDI cable to do the programming.. it's just a special usb cable. Being able to shave 20$ off each of your projects is worth it. Not to mention the space savings. The only way to get cheaper/smaller is to use a naked chip (imo).

That is correct. Mark Tilden has been doing similarly cool walking robots (but mostly in analog!) for years now. Check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM4DitOJdyA

I remember seeing a video of one of Mark Tilden's robots (or maybe it was one of Rodney Brooks) and he was able to bend a leg back and it would keep walking successfully with the remaining legs. The beautiful part was that there was no microcontroller involved - it was simple analog circuits replicating neuron functions. The class of robotics Tilden founded is called "BEAM robotics" - more information can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BEAM_robotics
http://www.solarbotics.com/

I would recommend something like a solar engine car or something similar. These are both cheap and easy for kids to make. Plus, you can have the kids race them. ;) Something like this, perhaps they could work out a deal with you to get it down to a more reasonable price: http://www.solarbotics.com/products/make06solarroller/

In Europe there are some great bench-top and hand-held tools available from Proxxon. In North America Sherline tools are a little more expensive. Alternatives include: MicroMark and Mini-Mate tools (the Mini-Mate is especially designed for hobbyists and older kids. We've got one.

The other word used is BEAM (Biology Electronics Aesthetics Mechanics) from Mark Tilden's early efforts (circa 1990-4) from isn't explicited junk / recycled focused.

A robot kit for just 100 bux? Did it work decently?

I can think of another sort of open source robots that cost well under $100.

You can pickup the parts from Solarbotics.com.

J Wolfgang Goerlich

Solarbotics makes a pretty cool mini-sumo kit which can have a couple different brains slapped in.

At $120 canuck, how can you go wrong

That would be Mark Tilden. He is primarily responsible for the BEAM (current site here) robots, lots of which are based on the bicore circuit and other novel simple circuits(read at the sites!).

Rather than a top-down method of robot design, where you take a brain and make it do cool things, his idea is to decide some basic function you want to accomplish--like walking--and design the simplest circuit that is able to do that. Then pick a new function (say, seeking light) and build that circuit. Hook the two together, and now you have a walking robot that seeks light. It is a more biological method to robot evolution.

If you like the idea of making a functioning insect-robot out of the parts from an old Walkman cassette player and a pocket calculator, you'll love BEAM robotics.

Jim

I bought a cool book that shows how to build robots out of parts from old floppy, CDROM and hard drives plus some other stuff.
Check it out at http://junkbots.solarbotics.com/

Google for BEAM robotics and you'll find lot's of links. There's even a company that specializes in BEAM kits if you're interested. I find the concept interesting, but a bit overrated. The BEAM robots in question don't really heal themselves in the tradiitonal sense of the word. It's just that they're simple enough (and thus robust enough) to take a bit of a beating.

BEAM stands for Biology, electronics, asthetics and mechanics

It is basically the name of a hobby about this very subject, taking trash and creating eye pleasing and working sculptures out of it.

A few links:
Solarbotics, a kit reatiler
A great site, full of links
A nice example of a BEAM robot

The article is very light on details, but I assume that this robot is of a variety known as "living robots" or BEAM robots. These robots do not use digital computer components like most people would probably assume. They use simple logic circuits to achieve their goal. And they DO learn in a very limited sense. They have a specific goal in mind (some learn to walk, some learn to seek out light to power their solar cell), and through trial and error they achieve that goal.

It looks as if these cars use may a
Microcontroller, perhaps not, but definitely an H-Bridge. And H-Bridge is a specialized push pull amplifier that can be used as a Motor controller. You can order this as Quad 2 Channel Drivers,
In a DIP Package.
Gee I'd love to
Hack one of these babies like
this fella
did.

But, it's really tough to find chips at those sizes.

On, the short battery life. I'm reminded of BEAM Devices which charge up a capacitor from a solar cell, then release the energy in a spurt, then go back to charging the capacitor. Here's a cool one

Solarbotics!

couldn't really have an article about Tilden without mentioning another REALLY DAMN COOL provider of nifty little robotics, that are based on the same concept (B.E.A.M) that Mark Tilden is famous for.

not for the lazy, though. most products are in kit form, which means you have to build it yourself. On the plus side, you get to build it yourself! :]

Sounds like this dude took these bots and just modded a few to feed off the others. I encourage anyone who has an interest in robotics, even just a passing fancy, to check out that link. They are incredible fun.

Other sites have put together other BEAM kits that are more expensive. SolarBotics seems to have a lot of stuff listed.

Now I gotta go do some sodering!

The pioneer when it comes to small, unintelligent, autonomous bots without a microprocessor must be Mark Tilden.
His creations are so cool, with the Spyder as the crown jewel. He has also applied for a few patents when it comes to his neuro-net technology, with components called BiCore and MultiCore, among others.

See www.solarbotics.com for information, pictures and more!

I've been building BEAM bots for a few years now, and I was wondering when a BEAM article would get posted here. cool.

For anyone interested in this, especially if you have been discouraged by trying to build other forms of robots, please look into BEAM. While it isn't always as cheap as they like to make it seem, it's much more rewarding than typical CPU-driven robotics.

If you would really like to learn more, you could try Solarbotics and get a kit, or just build your own from scraps. (It's much cheaper that way. :) I have a few that I've built for under $10 US, and none have been more than $30.

But don't be fooled.. even though they are reasonably easy to build, they are worthy of the title "Research Platform". The analog loops that Nv neurons produce can form some strikingly natural paterns. And people tend to like BEAM bots a little more than CPU based versions because they move much more quickly and naturally.

Above all, of course, have fun.

Robotics is a way to get people doing electronics in a fun way. Many simple robot designs don't even need a CPU, just carefull tuning. Take a look at BEAM robotics (Solarbotics has some BEAM type kits). They are simple brainless robots that move around based on simple hardware programming. Learning what it takes to make these tick would help tremendously at teaching electronics. BEAM style robots rely on feadback loop electronics to operate. LEGO Mindstorms is another way into robotics. After one has mastered what the LEGO parts can do, one can start building your own electronics hardware interfaces.

** We're using Xilinx's WebPack CPLD programing tools. Other companies also have tools available for free or cheep.

At the 1998 BEAM Workshop, I had the opportunity to meet Mark Tilden, inventor of BEAM and employee of Los Alamos National Laboratories. He demonstrated something along these lines, but more in line with the BEAM philosophy. I don't know what happened with it, though. If you're interested in more about BEAM, check out Solarbotics, a really great Canadian company with tons of info, kits, and general resources.
Phyrkrakr
"God doesn't play dice"-Einstein

If you have some spare change, then check out Solarbotics. If you want to build one from scratch, then go to some search engine, and search for Mark Tilden (that should get you going). So get out your soldering iron and electrical tape, and get to work making your very own robot.

The design may have changed since then, so this may no longer be correct, but the version I saw used only dead-reckoning (counting the revolutions of each wheel) to determine its position (and to some extent, whether it is stuck against an object), and had no other sensors (no bump sensor, no compass to sense direction, nothing to tell if it had tipped over or if the vacuum had become caught on the edge of a rug or a small pet, etc...)

I asked the guy who was demonstrating it what happened if there was a bump in the floor, it ran over something (would change "apparent distance" as well as possibly direction), your pet/kid/you bumped it and moved it, etc.

He sort of stammered and avoided the question.

Never mind the fact that you have to hook the vacuum up to it (and remove it, unless you want your vacuum sitting out in the corner of your living room), pre-load its tray with drinks, and recalibrate its destination points every time you move a piece of furniture.

Sigh.

p.s. again, these are only comments on a demo version I saw last year

p.p.s also at the robotics expo were Lego Mindstorms, some small solar robots, and NewtonLabs and their vision system (used on their winning robots in the Internation Micro Robot World Cup a few years back.