Alan – I program basic games on a really simple game creator, but is that the basics to robot building

Question: Alan - I program basic games on a really simple game creator, but is that the basics to robot building
- Keywords:
  basic,
  building,
  computer,
  creator,
  game,
  program,
  robot,
  simple
Asked by itsamonster713 to Alan on 18 Mar 2011 in Categories: Your Research.
- Alan Winfield answered on 18 Mar 2011:
  
  Hi itsamonster
  
  Yes, programming is certainly one of the skills a robot builder needs. In fact if you were to buy a robot ready-made, or a robot kit, then you avoid having to do the mechanical engineering or electronics design and all you have to do is program the robot. There are lots of neat robot kits around – a really great one is Lego Mindstorms (and some robot research labs use these for research).
  
  When you program robots you will find that you will need to learn how to write code to control the different parts of the robot. Especially reading from its sensors and writing to its motors to make it move. Depending on the kinds of games you are creating it’s possible that the ‘creatures’ in your game world also have to sense other creatures and move around, so you may find that you already understand more about robot programming than you think!

Question: Alan - I program basic games on a really simple game creator, but is that the basics to robot building