Build Your First Arduino Robot: Beginner's Guide

Table of Content

• What is Arduino, and why is it used for so many things?
  
• Arduino Robot kits: Beginner vs. Advanced - what is the difference?
  
• What You Need Before You Start Building
  
• The kinds of projects you could construct on an Arduino robot
• Building the basic Arduino robot step by step
• Mistakes Newbies Tend to Make
• Conclusion
• FAQs

You know you've seen them online. The fast-moving robots that dart around furniture, the robot arms that can grasp and move things, the robots that zoom around following lines on the floor that have been laid out with tape. Most likely, they were all built on an Arduino platform. The easiest way to get started in the world of robotics and electronics is to dive in with an arduino robot kit. The platform also has many ready-made code libraries, online forums, and tutorial information that really give you a head start.

Where things get a bit tricky is capability, and just knowing where to start. Which Arduino robot kit is best to get? Does the building process actually involve programming skills, or do I just purchase a robot kit and build an Arduino robot? What really is the difference between a simple toy that I could buy on Saturday afternoon and an actual Arduino STEM robot building kit? Let's see what an Arduino is and is not, what type of Arduino robot kit is appropriate for the user's experience, and some Arduino robot project examples that can be done using an Arduino robot kit. If you have a goal of creating a simple RC robot or an Arduino robot with true artificial intelligence using sensors, then learning about the Arduino robot kit options is where you will begin.

What is Arduino, and why is it used for so many things?

Arduino is a brand-name open-source microcontroller platform. Microcontrollers are tiny programmable circuits that read electrical signals from sensors, buttons, etc. And turn them into output like moving motors, lighting up LEDs, making sounds, etc. The initial circuit boards were developed in an Italian design school in 2005, and spread very rapidly due to cheap hardware and a relatively simple programming language supported by thousands of ready-made libraries to handle any problem you can throw at them.

The Arduino IDE programming language is basically a slightly pared-down version of C/C++, and most people have their first functional program up within an hour of starting to work with an Arduino board.

The reason it is used for robotics projects so widely is:

●     Controls motor drivers, servos, and ultrasonic sensors with relatively few connections

●     Can interface with many add-on modules (shields) and other devices

●     Any problems you encounter are almost certainly ones that someone has already encountered, solved and posted on the internet

●     Arduino boards cost anything between $5 and $30 (depending on what you get)

Popular Arduino boards for an Arduino robot are generally one of these:

●     arduino robot Uno (easiest to learn and start out with)

●     Arduino Mega (lots more pin numbers and resources if the design gets complicated)

●     Arduino Nano (very small for a neat robot design)

Arduino Robot kits: Beginner vs. Advanced - what is the difference?

Not all kits are made equal, and the purchase of an incorrect kit can be both a waste of your cash and your motivation.

Beginner kits

A beginner arduino robot kit usually comes with a chassis, two DC motors, an L298N motor driver, an ultrasonic sensor, and an Arduino board. Some kits may also come with a set of jumper wires, a breadboard, and a battery holder. Beginner kits are generally geared toward someone who has neither touched a soldering iron nor written a line of code in their life.

What to look for:

●     A guide with a step-by-step assembly with images

●     Starter code that can be edited and reprogrammed

●     A chassis that will not require you to buy custom tooling

●     At least one included sensor (preferably ultrasonic or IR)

The price for a kit like this ranges from around $15-45. An affordable kit from Elegoo called the Smart Robot Car Kit is one such choice.

Intermediate Kits

They come next. Typically, an intermediate kit might have servo-controlled arms, bluetooth or wifi capability enabling remote control, line following sensors, and maybe an LCD screen. There is more coding, and it can be quite fiddly to assemble.

Price Range: $40 - $90

Advanced / STEM Kits

A stem robot building kit at this stage can have a camera, multi-axis robot arms, wireless protocols, and sometimes even ai capabilities, making the distinction toward an ai robot slightly blurred. It is assumed here that you know your way around electronics and can debug problems yourself.

Price Range: $80- $200+

Do jump into a beginner kit even if you feel you can bypass it. Starting with a success is a massive motivation boost.

What You Need Before You Start Building

Many first projects fail not due to badly written code but due to a lack of the right basic parts. Make sure all of these components are working before connecting anything.

Hardware

●     The Arduino Uno board

●     The type-B USB lead (usually shipped with the board)

●     The breadboard and connecting wires.

●     A multimeter (a simple one that will measure voltage would be sufficient for now)

●     A 9V power supply, or a USB power bank if your motors need to run independently.

Software

●     The Arduino IDE (can be freely downloaded from www.arduino.cc)

●     Allow this to install the driver the first time around when asked

●     Try using Serial Monitor; it's by far the most useful debugging aid you will come across.

As an early practice, you should get into the habit of reading the data sheet of anything before you connect it. Sensors often have limits in terms of voltage, motor drivers in terms of current, etc. 10 minutes of reading could save you a lot of smoke — a lesson every ai robot builder learns eventually.

The kinds of projects you could construct on an Arduino robot

This is where the system has been most acclaimed. The projects range from the simple 2 hr obstacle avoiding robot to self-navigating and drawing bots.

Obstacle Avoiding Robot

The entry-level project is undoubtedly the classic obstacle-avoiding arduino robot. A sensor detects the distance to obstacles using a ping and reading the echo of its return. This project sends out an HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor, and if an obstacle is less than 20 cm away, the arduino robot turns; it continues straight.

The components for this build:

●     An Arduino Uno

●     L298N motor driver

●     HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor

●     Two DC motors with wheels attached

●     A 9V battery

Build time for the absolute beginner: 2-3 hours. This is probably one of the better projects to build, and includes 3 of the 3 bases of any robotics you may want to undertake: reading from sensors, construction of the motor driver, and controlling the motors via PWM.

Line-Following Robot

The robot here uses IR sensors on the underside of the body to follow a dark line on a white background. Left and right motor speeds are modulated so the robot continues on the path. The concept itself has to be in a real-time loop - sensor readings, code decision making, motor action, back to sensor readings, and it repeats endlessly.

The build seems common in school robot competitions. Here introduces you to the basics of PID control, which is also used for the cruise control on cars, and in industry devices.

Remote Control Robot

A remote control robot simply replaces the sensors with direct human input. The robot is equipped with an HC-05 module to connect to a free mobile application using a serial connection to the Arduino. Then, Arduino reads incoming data and drives the motors (left, right, forwards, backward).

The actual difficulty lies in writing the switch-case code to map instructions from the mobile phone to actual instructions, and a speed slider on the application introduces you to the concept of converting analog input to PWM for motor control, which can also be used in other contexts.

Robotic Arm

This one is a stationary robot, yet a very visually interesting project. Each link of the robot arm is controlled by SG90 servo motors, and you could build arms that would pick small objects, draw shapes on a surface, or imitate human hand gestures with the right configuration of the servos (4-6 servos needed).

With the use of potentiometers placed on the control glove, you are able to map the rotation of the potentiometers to each of the robot joints. This is the best kind of control and does not need complicated code. Robotic arms are a very good step towards bigger diy robot projects.

Building the basic Arduino robot step by step

Even though the robot is coming from a kit, building it in steps is helpful so that you don't get the same problems.

●     Step 1 - Building chassis. Fix the motors onto the robot frame, attach the wheels, and connect them all together using the supplied mounts. Make sure not to connect wires until step 2.

●     Step 2 - Wiring the motor driver. Connect the 4 input pins on the motor driver board to the Arduino board (it is very likely the 5, 6, 9, and 10 pins are to be used for motor directions and motor speed, i.e.). Use a battery to supply the motor driver board power, and do not connect it to the 5V output on the Arduino board because the motors draw too much current for the Arduino.

●     Step 3 - Wiring the sensor. Wire the HC-SR04 VCC to 5V, GND to GND, Trig to an arduino robot digital pin, and Echo to a digital pin. Note the pins you used, as this is important for programming.

●     Step 4 - upload the starter code. Paste code into the Arduino IDE, select the right board and COM port, and upload. Turn on the Serial monitor and verify that sensors are working, and then take your robot to the floor.

●     Step 5 - Taking the robot to the floor. Put the robot onto the floor, plug in the battery, and take a look at what it is doing. If it is not behaving correctly, print the sensor values and motor outputs, etc., by using Serial.println().

Mistakes Newbies Tend to Make

●     Forgets to write down the schematic. You'd be surprised at how far you can get with just wiring from feel alone, but it can't work forever.

●     Take the time to write (or sketch on some scratch paper) how the circuit should work.

●     Power the motors off the 5V pin. Motors require a significant amount of current, which will probably reset the processor and may permanently damage the Arduino.

●     Motors should always be run off the power jack on the motor controller!

●     Doesn't use Serial.println() to test the values. Is your robot acting weird? Then print out the values! The vast majority of issues faced by beginners are logic-based, not wiring-based.

●     Doesn't work the first time. This is a certainty, and in fact, if your first build doesn't fail, you are cheating or doing it wrong. Each failure you fix gives you experience that a tutorial can't.

Conclusion

An arduino robot offers what many other beginning electronic projects cannot - an effect that actually moves and does something real. Learning will be required but isn't necessarily difficult, and every project that fails helps you to learn in ways a project that doesn't failure cannot. The arduino robot platform is established and popular enough to ensure that nearly any problem you encounter has been solved and recorded already.

Start with the obstacle avoider, then purposefully break it. Then add a sensor, then add Bluetooth, then add a camera. The gulf between a $25 arduino robot kit and a well-functioning do-it-yourself robot that can make people say WOW, is less vast than one might expect-the only hurdle is hooking up the first motor driver to see.

FAQs

1. Which Arduino board is the best to use when building a robot as a beginner?

The Arduino Uno. The Uno board is affordable, simple to learn with, and has the highest number of community support out of all the Arduino boards.

2. Do I need prior knowledge of coding to be able to build an Arduino robot?

No.Most beginner kits come with example code that is readily loaded onto the Arduino and it is very easy to customize.

3. How much does a beginner Arduino robot kit cost?

An Arduino robot kit generally falls in the $15-$45 range.This range should cover all the necessary parts for a simple robot chassis, including the motor(s), motor driver, and sensors.

4. Is it possible to control a smartphone with an Arduino robot?

Yes. If a Bluetooth module ($3-5 for HC-05, for example) is added to the Arduino it is possible to pair it to your smartphone and use one of the free controller applications on the Android Play store to control your robot.

5. What is the difference between a DIY robot and a STEM robot building kit?

DIY Robot: The robot is built using components purchased separately. STEM Robot building kit: The kit includes all the components necessary for a particular build. These kits typically include a guide for the construction of the robot.