Re: Lua, Robotics, and a 13 year old...

[KHMan <keinhong@...>]

Mike McGonagle wrote:
> A friend of mine has a 13 year old kid who is interested in Robots. I
> am wanting to suggest that he learn a programming language (Lua in
> particular) and learn a bit about building a computer (as Robots are
> specialized computers). As Lua appears to be a language designed for
> embedded systems, I was wondering if anyone out there could give me
> some links to sites that deal with Robotic projects that are using
> Lua, so that I could pass them along to the kid to encourage him to
> learn Lua. Also, as a related topic, if there are any projects that
> are dealing with AI, that would be great, too. That would be something
> else for him down the road.

It's the wrong "embedded", I think. Lua's emphasis is on embedding 
into software programs, e.g. like VisualBasic in Excel or Word, 
but much better. Not the hardware embedded as in MCUs.

There are Lua for microcontrollers, but they are not really 
13-year-old-proof.

So there's the no-brainer Lego stuff. But cheap servos are so very 
attractive these days, however going the non-nicely-packaged route 
would be a bit more difficult, though there are things like 
Arduino or a BASIC-based board to make things easier.

--
Cheers,
Kein-Hong Man (esq.)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia