Have a project in mind but am pretty amateur to this stuff. Want to control basic motor functions (L,R, forward, reverse) via thumb joystick that is not hard wired to the motor and instead mounted to a separate item. Any help would be greatly appreciated
Any board will be adequate for your needs. An UNO is usually a good starter board.
You need two motors, am I right? One for left and one for right wheel?
You haven't said what kind of motors, so I'll assume standard, relatively low power DC motors. Correct me if I'm wrong. Saying the purpose and explaining your project is also a good practice.
You'll need a motor driver or two H-bridges.
If you want it as a shield, check out this one.
Yes, i am a proud owner of an UNO and i have built a similar idea to what you describe. you will also need an motor driver(chip or shield). i am using a chip, cant recall what chip but it is pretty popular, they are used in the motor shields as well, and i am just using the chip + digital signals to control the movements via the arduino code.
so in short, your project fits the UNO board, unless you want to controll lots of devices, you should look for more I/O board.. but for this UNO is very good 8)
edit; also, look into Radiofrequenty signals to send the joysticks output to the arduino robot. most suited are 433 mHz devices 