You must operate teathered via wifi either connected through a network or in a private network to either an android/iPhone or windows pc running ARC.

The processing required for vision processing, speech recognition, GAITing and other advanced robot features require computation far beyond the level of a microcontroller. Additionally, if you could create an embedded computing module which has the power of a PC to attach to your robot - would be silly due to the energy consumption vs weight ratio. The robot would weigh as much as a computer and therefore require additional power. Bigger batteries, bigger motors, bigger batteries, bigger motors, rinse, repeat.

Also, embedding PC comparable processing potential into an ez-b style robot controller is very expensive and the ez-b would cost as much as a PC.

Thirdly, the chance of you upgrading to a newer phone, tablet or PC is much higher than upgrading your robot controller

So in short, it's very cost effective, energy efficient, and strategic to offload the processing to another device.

Understood, and it makes a lot of sense.

Just use one of those micro computers like they use in cars, that will require just a 12v source, and it wont weight that much for the robot. Od fcourse the robot brains should always be with robot!