The Arduino Robot is the first official Arduino on wheels. The robot has two processors, one on each of its two boards. TheMotor Boardcontrols the motors, and theControl Boardreads sensors and decides how to operate. Each of the boards is a full Arduino board programmable using the Arduino IDE.

Control Board Summary

Motor Board Summary

Both Motor and Control boards are microcontroller boards based on the ATmega32u4 (datasheet). The Robot has many of its pins mapped to on-board sensors and actuators.

Programming the robot is similar to the process with the Arduino Leonardo. Both processors have built-in USB communication, eliminating the need for a secondary processor. This allows the Robot to appear to a connected computer as a virtual (CDC) serial / COM port.

As always with Arduino, every element of the platform – hardware, software and documentation – is freely available and open-source. This means you can learn exactly how its made and use its design as the starting point for your own robots. The Arduino Robot is the result of the collective effort from an international team looking at how science can be made fun to learn. Arduino is now on wheels, come ride with us!