Making the future with arduino
Introducing the Arduino Robot
After two years of hard work, experimentation, testing, and ups and downs, our robot is ready. The Arduino Robot was presented for the first time during Maker Faire Bay Area 2013. But for us it’s not only a matter of launching a new product. It’s more important to share a story of how a passion for tinkering is helping us explore new, unexpected roads. That’s why I asked David Cuartielles, co-founder of Arduino and the member of our team who has spent more time and sweat on the robot, to reveal how it all happened. In the last three years David moved from knowing nothing about robots to becoming an amateur roboticist with a strong interest in educational robotics. The Arduino Robot is the result of the collective effort from an international team looking at making learning science fun. Arduino is now on wheels. Come and ride with us!
—Massimo Banzi
Between 2009 and 2011, I ran an education project at the Computer Clubhouse FARO de Oriente in Mexico City. My role was to bring the craft of electronics to kids 6–18 years old. At the beginning I ran a series of workshops on how to build musical instruments repurposing components we found at the local flea market.
Once the kids became familiar with electronics and programming I asked them what their dream project would be. In the workshop there were both boys and girls, about 25 in total, and independent from their age and gender everybody wanted to make robots.
To be totally honest, robots are not my specialty, or they weren’t back then. I was never really interested in things that moved and performed tasks for me. I thought there were other more interesting fields within electronics than robotics, but I knew I had to follow the kids’ dreams at the Clubhouse. It soon became my mission to design an easy-to-replicate robot that could be made using parts existing in Mexico City.
I enlisted Xun Yang, at the time a master’s student in interaction design at my laboratory at K3, the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University, and together we designed a robot that could be easily etched and manufactured by hand. But not only that, we created a whole series of activities for the kids to learn robotics the fun way, from moving the robot to getting it to write text on the floor using a marker. We then made the design open source and Arduino-compatible.
I documented our work on my research blog and got an almost immediate response from the robotics community. It’s interesting now to read my diary notes and notice how my opinion about robots was slowly evolving. I started to understand that educational robotics could be a great entry for kids into science. We got a lot of good feedback about what people thought was great in our project and what we could do better. The robotics community is a lively one and people are very willing to share their knowledge.
I researched and bought every book I could find, one of my favorites being Almost Human: Making Robots Think by Lee Gutkind. Reading his book I learned a lot about the background of contemporary robotics and came to understand what’s most important in the field. One of the stories that caught my interest was the origin of the RoboCup competition as a way to put people’s intellect to the challenge of creating the best possible software to solve tasks. The creators went for three different challenges for their world championships:
• Soccer: It’s a game with equal rules for everybody. It’s easy to understand — robots use different techniques to follow a ball and score goals.
• Rescue: An activity where the competing teams have to solve a maze-like quest while gathering parts.
• Dance: Yes, robots can dance.
One of the many interesting experiences we ran into while working on our project involved a Spanish team called Complubot composed of two kids: Nerea and Iván. Together with their coach, Eduardo, they had been competing — and winning — the Soccer B category at the World Series of the RoboCupJunior (for high-school students).
In a way, RoboCup is like the Formula 1 of robotics. Every year the organization sets a series of rules that make things a little more complex than the previous competition. The teams work throughout the year to make a faster, lighter, and better robot with artificial intelligence. A fascinating rule from the RoboCup is that before entering the competition, each team has to explain its strategy to the other teams to show they’ve made the hardware and software designs themselves. There is nothing as open source as having to unveil your whole collection of tricks before joining a competition. This is not only about being good technically, but also about being good at explaining how the magic happens. Can you imagine a 12-year-old girl explaining how she, together with her team, built a robot with distributed intelligence by using up to four Arduino Minis and one Arduino Mega? Believe me when I say it’s a pretty amazing experience.
When we first met, Nerea and Iván had already won three RoboCup competitions and were on their way to a fourth. We spoke during one of my visits in Madrid, and it became clear to me that we had to work together. They were used to robots using multiple processors that cost as much as $4,000 in parts. Arduino tries to make things as affordable as possible so people can get access to educational tools, therefore my goal became designing a robot that could fit Complubot’s needs at Arduino’s prices.
I pitched the idea to the rest of the Arduino team, and we started working on the Arduino Robot. The project’s code name was Lottie Lemon, named after a character on The Muppet Show. I drew the first board that we mounted by hand in early 2011, and we started a long process of iterating designs. Once we had proof of concept, Arduino’s hardware guru, Gianluca Martino, took over so I could focus on the software.
During the following year we witnessed a lot of modifications. Every time we solved a bug we found, we came up with a new idea for a feature that could make the robot a little better without compromising the price. The control board went through seven iterations, while the motor board changed nine times. We made seven versions of the operating system until we figured out a way we thought would give people the best introduction to robotics. At the end of the process, we recruited Xun Yang back to the team to create a set of challenges people could undertake to start exploring the world of robotics. The goal was to have fun learning the fundamental operations of the robot, just like the kids who inspired us at the beginning of this story. 
Massimo Banzi and David Cuartielles are co-founders of the Arduino project.
Pick up your Arduino Robot today at the Maker Shed (makershed.com).
Check out Massimo Banzi's presentation on Board Building at makezine.com/35.