Chapter 1
Introducing the Arduino Development Platform
I built my first robot when I was five years old.
It didn’t do much. Truth is, it didn’t do anything. It was made from a discarded coffee can, some wires, and a few radio tubes I found in my father’s workbench. I sat on the can to flatten it out—that’s what robots look like, after all—and stuffed the wires and tubes inside.
Though my first Metal Man was just a pile of dusty old junk, it started me on a lifelong path to building bots of all kinds, shapes, and sizes. Until recently, building real robots took a lot of time, money, and technical skill. Even if you could pull it off, the results weren’t always impressive. There were hard limits to technology and budget.
Times have changed. ...