http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/975
:)
holy shi when i first saw*
holy shi* when i first saw the video and saw it zoom i was suprised as anything thats sick
the 3 pi Pololu robotwith an internal mapping utlity
Wow ! That’s pretty
Wow ! That’s pretty amazing.
( and I thought that a line follower would be boring ) I was wrong.
Thank you for sharing that with us.
Don’t worry about me, I probably won’t be trying that at home anytime soon.
It is also amazing that they can get that kind of speed and endurance from 4 AAA cells.
Duane S
Wilson, North Carolina USA
very fast and very precise!
very fast and very precise! coooool!
impressive and not too bad a
impressive and not too bad a price either…
Hey Frits,Nifty gadget …
Hey Frits,
Nifty gadget … like the movie… pretty dang fast
I’d never get one…(don’t like kits) but if Pololu is going to give me a whole crate of them … it might be fun to make them swarm…
Heh… I like your title, but then again … I don’t think anyone here is wrapping their own windings to their motors 
Nice robot but…
I agree with you, Chris… This site isn’t called “Let’s Buy Robots!” 
IMHO you’d never really get the hang of the electronics part of building a robot and never really feel “at home” with your robot if you go for a premade one. Of course not everyone likes to do electronics and just want to program a robot. For that purpose the robot will be great.
That said, I think it’s a really cool robot that does excellent line-following and maze-solving. But I want to build ultra-fast line-following like above 1 m/s using RC cars :-).
I tend to agree with you
I tend to agree with you Chris, regarding the "premade" aspect of it. A large part of my satisfaction comes from "putting it together and then making it work". I think that the learning part of the experience gives me the most satisfaction.
Will I buy one? No. But I still think that its pretty cool.
Duane S
Wilson, North Carolina USA
Wow 3ft. per second thats
Wow 3ft. per second thats ridiculous fast!!! 
Hello.I’ve found that one of
Hello.
I’ve found that one of the biggest deterrents for newcomers to the world of robotics is the need to understand electronics, mechanics, and programming. Unfamiliarity with all three sectors leads to a relatively steep learning curve. The 3pi is designed to give people a programmable, high-performance mobile platform that has all of the basic electronics and mechanical components in place. We provide software libraries that help interface with the on-board hardware and sample code, but the samples we provide leave a great deal of room for customization and optimization.
Additionally, there is room to add your own electronics, allowing you to augment the 3pi as you become more comfortable with electronics. This leads to a gentler introduction to electronics than having to figure out how to connect motor drivers, sensors, and microcontrollers before you have anything at all to work with. We will be coming out with an expansion deck for the 3pi in the next few weeks on which you can mount your own hardware (sensors, servos, LEDs, etc), including a secondary microcontroller board of your choosing that can use serial commands to control the 3pi and its integrated hardware. Since there aren’t many free I/O lines on the 3pi’s mega168, this secondary microcontroller could interface with additional sensors and then use serial to tell the 3pi what to do in response.
While the 3pi can function as a premade robot running sample code out of the box, it has the potential to be much more. It takes considerable programming effort to make it perform as it does in the maze-solving video on its product page, and the ability to add your own electronics lets you customize it for all sorts of unique applications. Of course none of this is meant to discourage you from building your own robots. The 3pi is targeted at those who have programming experience but don’t have the electronics expertise to make their own robots from scratch, and at those who want a high performance robot but don’t have the mechanical resources to make one.
- Ben