A quick recap

Having learned as much as you did throughout this book, it is helpful to take a moment to recap what you have learned and how it all fits together. So let us take a quick look back.

We learned how to build robots with Arduino boards and other off-the-shelf components. Creating robots requires skills from three different engineering disciplines: mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science (or programming).

We started by getting to know the Arduino platform. Arduino boards let us run small robot programs and interface with a large variety of hardware components. We covered writing programs for Arduino and understanding what Arduino board to select based on CPU specifications (clock rate and register size), memory size (FLASH, SRAM, and EEPROM), and available interfaces (SPI, I2C, serial, and so on). These topics are all part of computer engineering.

We also learned how to use the Arduino to interface with a variety of components that are...