RiCo

RiCo is an Arduino compatible, simple and low cost robotic platform. It is meant as a low cost introductory tool to robotics. Rico will find its way around obstacles and follow lines. It will detect motion and react.
Quite frankly RiCo is a combination of Arduino Uno, the Arduino motor shield and DC motor wheels. The former two have been stripped down to bare essentials, which reduces cost and power consumption. RiCo uses the Arduino atmega328P microcontroller and the L298 motor driver on a single PCB board which also supports the DC motor geared wheels.
By default it uses two sensors to explore its environment:

• a TCRT5000 based ir sensor on a breakout board for contour tracking
• a HC SR04 ultrasonic range detector

TCRT5000 based breakout - fits directly on RiCO

Additionally it can sense collisions or terrain inclinations by detecting curent through the motors.

Other than that... its up to you: you can attach breadboards, LEDs, bluetooth, RF, speaker, sensors... or anything you would plug into an Arduino.

Technical stuff:

here it goes straight up for the Arduino knowledgeable:

Digital pins 5,10,6,8,10,11 are reserved for motor control, they are accessible through neat high level functions such as robot.driveStraight(int speed),  or robot.stop();

Analog pins A0 and A1 are reserved for sensing current through the two motors.

Analog pins A2, A3, A4, A5 can be used also as digital input/outputs via the robot's library.

All other pins have been brought out with 0.1" headers and can accommodate the two standard sensors as well as other compatible sensors. There are four 4-pin port in the front and one at the back.

What has been done up to now?

• I've made two iterations of RiCo and tested it at a high-school robotics course.

• I've got a quick and dirty library that needs some additional refinements.
  

What still needs to be done?

• In its current state RiCo uses an external programmer to be programmed. I want to include a FTDI USB2UART chip so the  only extra hardware needed will be a usb cable (and batteries). Two more hardware iterations will be needed for this. I never get it right the first time.
  
• I need to figure out production details.

FAQ

• Will this be an open source project?
  Yes. Schematics and library will be published on a web site I'm building.
• The campaign video looks really crappy, did you make it yourself?
  Yes. Its my very first video editing attempt (with Blender). Hopefully it conveys the message. 
• Why did you make this thing anyway?
• I wanted to play around with simple robots and show them to my son. I've made one out of an Arduino UNO stacked to a motor shield, plexi board, DC motor wheels, etc. The price was approaching 100€ which I found quite ridiculous. Plus, there were wires all over the place.
  
  
  
• Why are you aiming for 2041€?
  It is for the 49 robots. 49 seems like a manageable number for a first batch. 
• Will the batteries be included?
  No. You will additionally have to purchase 4 NiCd batteries. Same goes for the USB cable.