The Dark Side Rover v.01 consists of:

• a chassis from Merkur Toys (Pásový podvozek 01)
• a clone of the RobotDyn UNO+WiFi R3 ATmega328P + ESP8266
• an ArduCam camera
• a servo + ultrasound sensor
• a motor driver from Olimex
• three 3D printed plates with holes spaced 1 cm apart (7x10)
• connectors
• a 3D printed holder for two 18650 batteries (but not the batteries. Can be purchased online or in e-cigarette stores)

The robot comes unassembled and does not require soldering. All designs and components are fully Open Source, see the hackaday.io project for details.

Assembly: The assembly instructions for the rover are the ones provided by Merkur. The three 3D printed plates and the electronic components can be clicked together with the connectors as you see fit and is completely straightforward. The wiring is described in the rover code's README file.

The robot connects via wifi to a server to fetch sequences of commands consisting of

• 'a' - left
• 'w'- forward
• 's' - backwards
• 'd' - right
• 'p' - take a photo
• 'm' - make a measurement (distance scan).

The command strings are entered through the Dark Side Commander, a static html file interfacing the server's REST end points.

About the concept

The Dark Side Challenge is a DIY Arduino robot project for teaching kids how to combine machine autonomy with human decision points. And programming. From kindergarten to rocket science.

The goal of the Dark Side Challenge is to build a robot that can autonomously navigate through a terrain where radio contact is sporadic or impossible – just as if it were on the dark side of the Moon or somewhere even farther away.

While achieving that goal, the challengers are learning to program and debug embedded devices and sensors, to imagine, reason and persevere, understand how to properly balance machine intelligence with human interaction. The youngest ones are even learning the alphabet – both in capital and small letters!

The repository on Gitlab contains a progression from the simplest Arduino program (Blink), to more advanced topics in C++, Java and Javascript and can even lead to understanding differential equations at an early age.

It only uses standard (and cheap) hardware. The rover can easily be set up allowing for schools (or other organizations) around the world to connect and visit each other virtually.