Building a Network Controlled Robot With Arduino and Raspberry Pi
Designing and coding an intermediate level hobby robot
Overview
Hobby robotics is a fascinating mix of different skill sets — a bit of electronics, a dash of mechanics, some code. You can go as deep as you want — open source projects make advanced projects like vision or Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) easier to implement than ever before. There are even free simulators if you want to play with algorithms and aren’t interested in building hardware. It’s a terrific playground for DIY enthusiasts, programmers, and budding engineers.
Having built several simple Arduino robots with a few sensors, I wanted a platform that I could use to experiment with more advanced features. I settled on a robot that, for first steps, could stream high quality video and be driven over the network. I wanted enough compute power on board to pursue autonomy or light machine vision projects later.
Design Goals
- Good quality, low latency video stream as a top priority
- Robust network control from a gamepad
- The ability to monitor the robot’s battery pack and send telemetry back to the user
- A cool moon rover vibe
