My daughter is 13 and she is interested in robotics. She has a science project coming up and she would like to build a robot that has some form of AI. We were thinking maybe creating a maze that the robot would navigate using onboard sensors, and at the same time store the successful path so that when we place it at the start again, the robot can easily just repeat the moves to get it thru the maze. We don’t really want an off-the-shelf robot with a lot of other functions as this will distract from the project goal. We’d like to keep this as economical as possible. Any suggestions are appreciated,
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Hi micoleman,
I’m glad your daughter wants to build robots and you will be helping her.
I have some recommendations and I’m sure others will come along with their recommendations as well.
First, I suggest you start with a kit. That will make things a lot easier to get started. You won’t have to worry about finding the right motors and wheels or motor controller that works with those motors and so on. There is a LOT of things to be considered. A simple kit puts all the parts together for you and should give you basic instructions on how to make all the parts work together. But there is still PLENTY to keep you busy for a while after that.
For your goals I would recommend the robot have an ultrasonic obstacle detector. That will allow it to detect where walls are. Wheel encoders are a good idea but perhaps not required. They will make navigation easier in some cases.
One recommendation that I make very strongly is that the robot be based on ARduino. It is one of the simplest control computers to use, is very powerful, and has the most resources and support available of all the possibilities.
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Thanks, I like the https://www.robotshop.com/en/makeblock-mbot-v11-blue-stem-educational-programmable-robot-bluetooth.html that you recommended - it seems like a good starting point and not too pricey.