Haha, man, I really did pick a pain of a project. I think I'm going to get a starter kit with the UNO and play around with motors along with some more research on various servos. Like what most people on here are saying, this is going to be a trial and error project. Good thing this is just for fun, haha!
I am going to assume that the Arduino motor shield won't be the solution. It only supports 2dc motors? Anyone know of a good one that like someone said, supports 18 servos and additional sensors. I'm thinking of two ideas: One would have a motor in the middle that rotates 360 with a distance sensor that follows which direction the robot is moving to prevent it from running into things. The other idea would stick 3 or 4 distance sensors on the thing, but the latter seems to add more weight and take up more I/O ports, so I'm leaning to the first.
I also have an old VEX robot from when I was younger I was thinking of savaging parts from, and it has a camera attached to it with a two pin chord to its microcontroller. It's actually pretty light, but from what I can see, it looks like the camera records and sends the signal wirelessly to a receiver instead of transferring the signal back through the wires, meaning the wires are simply power. Good news for me, I'm thinking of putting that on there as well and using the micro controller just for power. Anyone know how to make the signal wLan instead of a RF signal though?