PhoneBOT is a cheap, simple, and quick method for turning an Android phone into a robot.
What makes PhoneBOT so great?
Most hobby robots are powered by an Arduino or some other microcontroller. The user must buy a frustrating amount of extensions and add ons, like Bluetooth modules and motor shields, to improve the robot's functionality. A PhoneBOT is powered by a phone. The user can program a PhoneBOT to access the phone's hardware. With PhoneBOT, the user can build a robot with tons of features, such as Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi, etc, at a fraction of the cost. Building an equally powerful Arduino or Raspberry Pi robot can cost hundreds of dollars. PhoneBOT's aim is to be the perfect entry level robot. Cost, difficulty, and time consumption are the biggest priorities. Therefore, no special skills or tools are required to construct a PhoneBOT.
TL; DR PhoneBOT can make anyone a powerful roboticist. Cue Evil Laugh
How does it work?
PhoneBOT is composed of an Android phone, two continuous servos and wheels(modded), a pair of head phones(preferably broken), a 9V battery, and a 3D Printed Base(optional). When these objects are assembled we have a robot that can be programmed to do a great number of things. The default program allows you to remotely drive the robot from a PC. PhoneBOT controls the drive servos with music(might not be your taste). The servos are connected to the phone's headphone jack. The phone drives the servos by emitting particular sound waves. PhoneBOT is programmed with an app called Protocoder. This is a coding environment, made by Victor Diaz, that allows the user to program the robot with Javascript and access the phone's hardware.