Arduino: the brains behind the world's most popular robots
Robotics has become one of the most prominent technologies of recent decades, transforming industries, homes and the daily lives of millions of people around the world. As a result, interest in understanding and mastering the fundamentals of this scientific discipline has boomed in recent years.
However, until not so long ago, robotics was not within everyone's reach: those interested in entering this field needed to develop advanced knowledge in electronics, programming and applied physics.
Moreover, electronic components, microcontrollers and other essential tools to build a robot could be very expensive and difficult to obtain, so robotics education remained limited to a few specialised centres.
It was not until 2005 that a group of researchers from the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea (a city a few kilometres from Milan) presented the first version of Arduino, an open-source hardware and software platform aimed at democratising this technology, making it easier for students, amateurs and professionals to develop their own prototypes without the need for in-depth knowledge of programming and other subjects.
Basic components for a revolution
To understand how the Arduino works and its impact on the world of robotics, it is essential to analyse its fundamental components. At the heart of the platform is its programmable board, a physical component equipped with a microcontroller that acts as the "brain" of any project, executing code and processing data inputs and outputs.
Even more interesting, and why Arduino boards have become the most popular in the world, is their huge variety of ports, which allow them to connect to sensors, motors, controllers and other electronic components, allowing them to interact with the environment.
In addition to the board, the Arduino project has its own development environment: Arduino IDE, a framework based on C/C++ that facilitates the development of all kinds of projects and is accessible to any level of knowledge. For this purpose, in addition to the editor itself, it includes tools for debugging the code, visualising the data or loading the programs directly onto the board via a USB connection.
And although Arduino was undoubtedly a technical success right from the very first version, it would not have succeeded without the support of a huge community of users. The fact that all the components of this project are Open Source is what has allowed millions of students, engineers and educators to share their knowledge and projects through forums, social networks or collaborative platforms such as Arduino.cc or Instructables.
One, Mega, Nano and more
As the imagination is the limit, the projects that can be implemented thanks to Arduino are infinite. Some can be as simple as a home weather station or a robot capable of following a line drawn on the ground. Others can be as complex as setting up an automatic lighting system with motion sensors or even an autonomous robot using computer vision and artificial intelligence-based navigation.
Depending on the type of project, the platform's developers recommend the use of different types of boards. Arduino Uno is ideal for beginners and basic projects; Mega is suitable for complex projects where many components are needed; Nano is the most interesting for projects with space limitations or portable applications; and Portenta is the most suitable for use in projects related to IoT, Machine Learning and telecommunications.
How do they differ?
Although they share a common core of components, in addition to their different sizes, some of them stand out for their higher speed, RAM, internal storage, digital pins (i.e. the number of components that can be connected) or the inclusion of advanced components integrated on the board itself, such as Wi-Fi connectivity, Bluetooth, LoRa, etc.
In addition to the boards themselves, in recent years the so-called "Arduino kits" have also become popular, packages that include a combination of electronic components and an Arduino board to facilitate the learning and development of projects with this platform. They are mainly designed for beginners and come with detailed instruction manuals for experimenting with all kinds of projects.
Present and future of Arduino
Today, Arduino has become an essential educational tool in schools and universities to teach programming, electronics and applied science concepts. Thanks to its low cost and accessibility, it is also one of the tools of choice for companies around the world to create rapid prototypes in fields such as robotics, but also in industrial automation or the Internet of Things.
In addition, the integration of new processors equipped with Artificial Intelligence is leading these boards to be able to run local models that allow them to carry out advanced tasks such as voice recognition, computer vision or the control of autonomous robots. Their compatibility with other technological platforms such as Raspberry Pi, their native integration in cloud environments (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and even their combination with virtual and augmented reality technologies, position them as one of the spearheads of the next technological revolution.
At UDIT, University of Design, Innovation and Technology, Arduino is part of programmes such as the Degree in Robotics, a unique training itinerary in Spain, born from the intersection between robotics, programming, artificial intelligence, user experience and design.
