can't I connect to arduino through USB and use a small C program on the netbook to communicate with arduino through the usb connection? also program arduino to feedback the sensor measurements back to the PC? if yes, which parts do you guys suggest? is arduino uno enough by itself?
Netbook <--> Arduino via USB will work fine, and the Arduino should have plenty of I/O to run the
robot. I don't know about "C" on the netbook however.
If a Linux netbook, then C sounds right, but for a Windows netbook, you'll probably need to go
with C++ or C# or Basic, all of which are available in free .NET Express versions from Microsoft.
Both C# And Basic have a serial port object, and I would imagine so does C++.