How much do you have to spend on a robot for the classroom? There is a profusion of expensive, shiny toys on the market being promoted for STEM education, but this isn’t the only way to do robotics.

Here’s my prototype bare-bones robot. There’s nothing really new here, it’s just a couple of motors, a motor controller and an Arduino Nano board. It’s just to show how the most basic robot could be built as a starting point for my students to start thinking about their designs. There’s less than $20 worth of parts (if you buy directly from China, and order in bulk).

In this form it doesn’t do much, but the idea is that students will use the basic design as a platform on which to create their own unique projects. They have to think about what to use for a chassis, how to control it (IR, Bluetooth, WiFi, RF?), to put LEDs on it, sensors and so on.