A novel and affordable robot kit for completion of the requirements for the Boy Scouts of America robotics merit badge

The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) recently added a merit badge for robotics in their initiate to educate the Scouts about this evolving field. To earn this badge the Scouts must identify a robotics project then build and program a robot to complete a task. To aide in this effort, the BSA suggests the use of an off the shelf (OTS) complete robot kit. While these kits provide convenience for the end user they are expensive and may prohibit and discourage some Scouts from earning the merit badge. In an effort to make this badge available to every Scout, we propose in this paper an affordable robotics kit alternative for the Scouts that is versatile enough to allow for many projects for the merit badge and beyond.