Which programing language is used to program robotics. Should i learn C or Assembly.

I guess they use asm. But I also guess it depends.

Depends.
In my Robot project, i use Lego Mindstorms to build the body.
Some people also use the controller to program their bots.

In that case you would have to learn the language of the controller, which is a visual language, in wich you stick object together to make the program logic.

I''m currently using 2 diferent chips.
A Basic Stamp (model 2p 24), from Parallax.
With this chip, you need to learn a very basic language, script-like. The chip is great to start programming, and you will find books with literally hundreds of projects for it.
It has a great following.

The next step is the Basic-X.
Here the editor IDE is more advanced.
You program in a very Visual Basic 6 kindda way. Very similar.
If you are already familiar with VB6, this shouldn''t be very hard.

Of course, for each chip, you have to learn what it is capable of doing or not...

Both chips run in the range from 40$ to $120.

A Lego Mindstorm box 2.0 must be in the near $150 range...

Robotics is great, and also looks great in a Resume

After these basic chips, come much more advanced stuff, like PICs.
These have huge huge followings, but most aren''t self-contained, like the Basic-X or Basic Stamp, in the sense that you need a few extra external components to make them work, like a crystal to make the clock work.

The Basic-X for example has a built-in clock, and 2 leds, one reg, other green. You can test a lot of stuff with this.

There are other chips that run a quasi-C language also.
Those I''ve seen are really much more expensive, and maybe they don''t offer much more that the basic chips, except running speed.

Both the Basic-X and Basic Stamp are the size of your thumb, and they run around 12.000 instructions per second.

You really need to visit their websites for detailed info...

Good luck

[Hugo Ferreira][Positronic Dreams]
All your code are belong to us!

It largely depends on what you want to do. If you want to build robots from scratch, chances are you will be programming in assembly to interface with the various sensors and actuators at some point. If you want to control robots and make them do cool things or do complex analysis of sensor data, look towards a higher level languages. If you are serious about robotics however, it is best to dabble in both the low and high level...

There are C compilers for just about every processor under the sun these days; I even have one for the Lego CPU called Quite C (not to be confused for Not Quite C).

If I were you I would learn some BASIC assembly; by basic I mean just get your head around doing some simple stuff like the stack, instruction pointers, using commands and registers, etc... It''s not that hard, and in some ways is easier to learn than C/C++.

So I guess what I''m saying is learn both, but you only need the absoulute basics.

Best of luck,
Will

the best good, fast, and cheap microcontroller ive found come from atmel ( http://www.atmel.com ). im not sure if theres any C compiler for them, but even if you must do assembly, they''re the best microcontrollers ive found.

- jeremiah

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