The first exploration for the current design started with an earlier platform, based on a within the faculty developed microcontroller-board based on a Microchip PIC8F4550, used in the assignment Microcontrollers.

This explorative platform called PicBot was hard to program (for designers) and would need a lot of support. The platform contained besides the microcontroller two geared motors with wheels mounted on a chassis, on top of that a PCB with a motor driver, some switches as collision sensors and a battery pack mounted on the backside.

As being an engineer who had some ‘free’ time in his Christmas holiday the creation of the first arduino-based platform was achieved, this first prototype was called ArduinoBot.
The advantage of using an Arduino a processor unit is that these units are available worldwide and that there is a large community behind this open-source platform. The advantage is that there is a large example-code base available which students can can check if they run into problems.

As can be seen on the picture, this version included also wireless communication trough an Xbee module, only two light sensors where included and the battery-pack was mounted between the chassis and the main PCB. The original design of Arduinobot was more focused on embedded programming to create standalone functionality as can be seen in this video clip.

After these explorations the decision was made to develop this platform into a mature platform for students to learn and get enthusiastic about programming.

AdMoVeo was Born.