This month I created my first [robot](https://github.com/atteroTheGreatest/robocar). I love creating projects. Usually they are just a software, but this time it was different. I wanted to dive into hardware. I knew some electronics, I had a few courses in electronics on university, both analog and digital electronics. Recently I finished an edX course: [embedded - shape the world](https://www.edx.org/course/utaustinx/utaustinx-ut-6-01x-embedded-systems-1172) where I had to write programms for Tiva launchpad. It was a bit tedious, but also a lot of fun. I decided that I want to to use my new skills to create something awesome... a robot. A `robot` is a pretty broad definition . My project had a following requirements: - be able to ride autonomously - avoid to obstacles - have a proper documentation Those requirement doesn't sound impossible. But how do we start? ###Components What do we need to create a robot? - brain - chip to control a robot - motors with drivers - sensors to gather information about an environments - chassis I used atmega32u4 as a brain of my robot. - it's pretty easy to use - it's well documented - it's pretty cheap - it has USB and easily programmable - I already had an arduino board with atmega32u4 It's parameters aren't very impressive, but chip is okay for most use cases of begginers. I wanted a simple chassis and didn't want to create it from scratch, so I bought sparkfun [redbot chassis](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10825). It's quite cheap and works just fine. It also had simple DC motors. Apart from chip, chassis and motors I used a simple distance sensor: [distance sensor](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10825) mounted on servo. It created a radar which I used to scan my environment. ###Design I didn't have a concrete project design. It was developed in small iterations. The final circuit design looks like this:  ###Short deadline I wanted to finish this project and do it fast. I set myself a goal to finish it in three weeks and after those three weeks open source its code and show the robot to the world. Having a short deadline was a very good decision. Of course, if I had more time I would probably made some things better, but would I finish it? I don't know, probably not. It was a bit crappy and wibbly-wobbly, I used duct-tape and zip-ties but learned a lot. I open sourced on the last day, wrote about it on warsaw-hackerspace mailing list and showed people live. I had a great feedback. Now, after my first iteration I know something about robotics! For my next project I would probably used more advanced microcontroller, such as for example tiva launchpad, because I ran out of timer on my small atmega. I would probably use another sensor, because after I open sourced my code, some people told me that there are much better alternatives which give better sensor data. Writing documentation and open sourcing my code gave me a lot of satisfaction. My code is now useful for other people and I have a robot:  Observing it is a lot of fun, it's a bit clumsy but also cute :).