Educational Robot with Sample OOPic Programs.

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Bot On a Board (BOB)

An Educational Robot with Sample OOPic program lessons.

BOB is my first "from the ground up" robot.

I needed a "Bare Bones" robot that I could use to teach a whole range of programming concepts, so I needed it to be as multi-purpose as possible. I also needed it to be inexpensive so that just about anyone could afford it. One of the things that was lacking from most inexpensive robot kits was feedback from the drive system (wheels). Without feedback, it's hard to know how far you've moved or turned, or even if the wheels have stalled. After figuring out that I could add a small circuit board to a Tamiya Dual Motor Gearbox to make my own optical encoder, I suddenly realized that if I added brains and sensors to the board, it was a complete "Bot On a Board".

So now the game was afoot.

My challenge was to see if I could pack enough stuff on a 2.5" x 3.8" circuit board (ExpressPCB's Mini-Board format) to be a useful robot. I also didn't want to fabricate any additional metal or plastic parts. Nothing but the bare bones. BOB was born.

There's so much I want to say and do with BOB that I have split this project page into smaller sections. Hopefully I'll have a section that interests you. Just click the section title to read more.

[How I designed BOB]
If you ever wondered if you could design a robot, you probably can. Check out how I did it.
[BOB's essential Features]
Here's what actually makes BOB tick.
[Building BOB V1.1]
OK, I built it, am I game to turn it on?
[BOB Software]
Here are a sequence of "lessons" that show how to write programs for BOB.