Ashish Derhgawen has built a Computer Controlled Wireless Robot. It uses some linked together off the shelf electronics to get the job done. The vehicle that is being controlled is a Microbric Viper which is normally controlled via IR light.

“I’m using a 1/4 wave monopole antenna (6.8 inches) with the RF modules. It’s just a single core wire. The range I get is amazing. I think I get about 100-120 ft (through walls), and 1000+ ft outside (line-of-sight)!

The Arduino communicates with my computer through a USB to Serial cable. If I want to make the robot move forward, I would send the character ’1′ to the Arduino. It would recognize this as a command and forward it to the transmitter. I can send four commands to the Arduino – ’1′, ’2′, ’3′ and ’4′. On receiving these characters, it sets the appropriate data bits on the encoder and transmits the signal.“