What is the best hardware interface system for a new robot project?
I am developing an educational robot program at a community college using ROS as the software platform and am looking for the best hardware interface for my design. I need something that is easy to implement so that students can add/remove functionality with minimal software implications. My robots will contain laptop computers with ethernet, usb and bluetooth capabilities.
So far I am looking at the RoNex as a possibility, but would like some feedback if this is the best approach? I have also looked at simply buying USB GPIO modules, but I want to keep the custom software to a minimum so simple integration with ROS would be a great feature. We will be interfacing all kinds of analog and digital sensors, encoders, cameras and such.
If anyone has experience in this area, advise would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Jonathan West Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute