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!