7. Movement Style

Let's determine how your robot will move!

ARC uses movement panels to control a robot's movement. Each project is limited to one movement panel. This is because the movement panel registered itself into the movement manager service. This allows any robot skill to share the control movements of the robot. For example, by adding a Joystick or WiiMote robot skill, the robot can automatically begin moving because the current movement panel handles the movements.



Tip: There is a section for additional details on how ARC uses movement panels and what a movement panel is.

Movement Panel Manual


Advantages of Movement Panels

The convenience of the movement manager service is that any ARC robot project can control any other robot product, irrelevant of the locomotion type (flying, walking, two-wheel driving, etc.). If your ARC project was created for a wheeled robot, you could replace the wheeled movement panel with a drone movement panel. Directions (forward, left, right, etc.) are sent to the movement manager service by any robot skill and handled by the movement panel to have the robot move.


Directions

The ARC framework provides several pre-programmed directions: forward, left, right, reverse, stop, roll right, roll left, up, down, and custom. Movement panels will support the directions that are appropriate to their movement type. For example, an HBridge movement panel will not support UP or DOWN because the robot must have wheels and, therefore cannot fly. You can see what directions are supported on a movement panel by the buttons visible on the interface. This diagram demonstrates how the various directions are expected to behave by movement panels. For example, turning left or right is expected to rotate on the spot. However, to turn slightly right while moving forward will require the robot to move forward with the right wheel speed somewhat slower than the left.


Choose a Movement Panel Type

Here is a list of movement panels for various robot configurations, including robots that walk with gait humanoids/hexapods and more. Select a movement panel to learn how to use it and add it to the project. This list can also be found in the Movement Panels category of the robot skill store or within the ARC software.

The AR Drone Movement Panel allows control of an AR Parrot Drone Quadcopter v1 and v2. The A and Z keys are used for Up and Down when using the keyboard mode. The Arrow keys are used to move the...


Use this to make your robot walk or move using servos. This movement panel is used for humanoids and hexapods. Create frames and actions to animate the robot servos into pre-defined positions. A...


A movement panel to control brushless motor controllers. These are used in hoverboards or many other robot types.


This movement panel controls two continuous servos, which have continuous rotation. Unlike a Standard Servo, a continuous servo has its internals changed to allow continuous 360 rotation. The two...


Use this skill if your robot requires a motor/movement controller that is not supported. You may assign scripts to the Forward, Backward, Left, Right, and Stop commands. Script functions are also...


An advanced custom movement panel with more features than the regular panel


Control the DJI Tello drone from ARC and receive the camera video feed for tracking.


A movement panel for using a two-channel hbridge that uses DC motors. There is no speed control with this movement panel. The motors will be either ON or OFF. An H-Bridge is an electronic circuit...


A movement panel for using a two-channel hbridge that uses DC motors. This will also control the speed of the motors using PWM signals to increase the robot's mobility. An H-Bridge is an electronic...


The inverted pendulum skill is designed to be used with the Sainsmart v3 balance robot but technically you can use the Sainsmart hardware, combined with ARC, to balance any robot.


Control the older iRobot Discovery and 4xxx for legacy support


Control the iRobot Roomba and read sensor data from 500 series roombas


This skill connects the Ohmnilabs Telepresence Robot servo/wheel hardware with ARC.


This control has been deprecated and replaced with iRobot Movement Panel


Movement panel for the Kangaroo and Sabertooth from Dimension Engineering.


This control supports the Sabertooth H-Bridge Motor Driver as a movement panel with variable speed in Simplified Serial mode.


The Sphero Movement Panel controls a Sphero over Bluetooth. Connect your computer to the Bluetooth signal of your Sphero. The computer will detect 2 COM ports for the Sphero; only one of them will...


Control UBTech Alpha robot via bluetooth


The WowWee MIP robot is hackable with a UART port on the mainboard. Connect the GND, TX, and RX to an EZB’s UART TX and control it from ARC. You can power the EZB with the MIP's onboard batteries,...


The WowWee MIP robot is hackable with a UART port on the mainboard. Connect the GND, TX and RX to the EZ-B's UART TX and RX to control it from an EZ-B.