   Robotics suggestions
  Hi, I'm an active member of the ACM at CSUFresno. It has recently been announced by our MSDNAA contact (also an ACM member) that we've been granted 250$  by Microsoft to fund a robotics project. While the budget is tight, I'd like to do more than a non-autonomous remotely controlled vehicle.I've been thinking about proposing a wheel-driven binocular robot capable of creating and traversing a path given an origin and a goal on a flat paved surface.Is it unreasonable to assume that the necessary parts will bring us over budget? (tools and labor not included) Also, what cameras are easy to work with from a programmer's standpoint. Are there cameras availible that easily interface with a PIC?Lastly, should I consider another project? I'd rather complete a working robot than go over budget and/or not complete one at all.Thank you   
  I took a robotics class and in one of the labs we had to build robots that tracked orange balls and pushed them into a corner, using only sonar for localization. We used the "handyboard" system and the "cmucam".The advantage of this pair is a lot of the software is already implemented - but you are limited to the vision provided by the cmucam, like color tracking.If by binocular you mean having stereo vision, good luck. Stereo requires high quality cameras and lots of processing power. There's no skimping on that part, unfortunately. You can try, I suppose.   