If by robot you mean the actual EZB controller than yes, you need an EZB4 controller to connect to... ARC software on your PC connects via wifi or Bluetooth to the ezb4 or ezb3 controller not to it's self... And yes you can use ARC without the actual controller... but obviously there will be some limitations...

Oh I see I see..

I'm still waiting for my robot to be shipped here, so I thought I would try experimenting with the ARC for a bit. Do you all have any suggestions what I should do first?

You can familiarize yourself with some of the features. Perhaps play with the Camera Control...

1. Load ARC

2. Select PROJECT from top menu

3. Select Add Control

4. Select Camera and add the Camera Device

Experiment with different features using the EZ-Robot designer as well. Just click on stuff and play. That's the best way to learn Play...

Load some of the example projects and play around with them a bit... see how changing settings affects things.... Obviously you'll be limited until your EZB4 comes, but at least you can get familiar on how to use ARC.... read over the online manual and take a look at some sample scripts to see how they work as well.... Once you get your ezb4 you'll be set....

Alright thanks a lot everyone!

Scripting (for the most part) will also work without a connection to an EZ-B. I often write my scripts without an EZ-B attached. All that wont work are any commands that move servos or read from sensors etc.

In fact, the majority of my Ping Roam scripts were written without an EZ-B ever being paired with the PC, sensor values were random numbers and servo commands were replaced with setting variables and writing values to log files while creating the scripts.

Voice commands (recognition and speech synthesis) will work without an EZ-B, as will the RSS, HTTPGet etc. commands so all internet based retrieval of information scripts can be done with no EZ-B.

You can add the controls and get familiar with them too, they just wont do anything other than flag an error in the debug if you use them without an EZ-B attached.

Glad you solved your problem.

Just out of interest and not intended in any belittling or sarcastic way at all but what did you think the connection would do or enable?

You could also go out to the cloud and download someone's project and see what they did and how they did it. I looked at many of the projects that are out there to get a feel for how things worked before I started a project. I find it easier to start with an example than to start with a blank canvas when first playing with some new technology.