Arduino makes it incredibly easy to start building projects on your own. It comes with a simple software environment, complete with sample programs foryou to upload to the device. And it’s incredibly cheap, too. Arduinos can be bought for ?20 - even less if you shop around - and you can pick up a selection of electronic components to play with for only a few pounds.

But the really great thing about working with Arduino compared to other

computer projects is that you can see the results of your programming directly affecting or physically interacting with the world around you. Instead of making graphics appear on a screen, for exam pie, you can program areal light to switch itself on and off, oryour programs can receive and interpret information about the real world via a sensor.

Individually, these functions might not sound Earth-shattering. But when you

start combining them together and adding others-adistance sensor to interpret the environment, say, and some motors for autonomous motion - suddenly you’re starting to build a robot.

And that’s exactly what you’ll be doing if you follow the projects in this book. We’ll start by making simple projects and gradually build it all together until we’ve created a complete robot. You won’t need to learn anything massively complicated or use any unfamiliar equipment. And if you’re still feeling daunted, remember if the author of this book can go from knowing almost nothing to building his own robot, then anyone can.