not enough computing power?

I'm planning to implement SLAM with laser range scanner. this requires quite a lot of computing power, so Arduino probably won't work. considering modern smart phones have really powerful CPUs (8-core even), how can I connect Arduino platform to a smart phone so that I use Arduino for the sensor data collection and motor actuation, and use the smart phone for computation?

Bluetooth serial would be the typical solution here.

I second the Bluetooth idea. I like HC-05 modules since they can be set to act as either a master or a slave. HC-05 modules cost less than $4 on ebay.

Change your baud to 115200 so you can share your data faster. For even faster data transfer, you can use a non-ASCII protocol.

It might be easier to write a program for a Raspberry Pi than it would be to write one for an Android.

teddyyyy123:
I'm planning to implement SLAM with laser range scanner. this requires quite a lot of computing power, so Arduino probably won't work. considering modern smart phones have really powerful CPUs (8-core even), how can I connect Arduino platform to a smart phone so that I use Arduino for the sensor data collection and motor actuation, and use the smart phone for computation?

Have you checked out ...

  1. The Intel® Edison module is a SoC (System on Chip) that includes an Intel® Atom™ 500MHz dual-core, dual-threaded CPU and an Intel® Quark™ 100MHz microcontroller ?

  2. The Arduino Tre, based on the Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor. Texas Instruments said that with the Tre's 1GHz processor, it is the "most powerful Arduino to date" and the first that will be able to run "full Linux."

  3. The Alorium Technology "XLR8" – an application accelerator and development board programmed with Arduino. XLR8 provides hardware based Floating Point Math implemented in the FPGA fabric. Functions and operations can be accessed from your sketch by installing our library and using our floating point arithmetic functions.

  4. Intel Galileo is a microcontroller board based on the Intel® Quark SoC X1000 Application Processor, a 32-bit Intel Pentium-class system on a chip

@mrsummitville thanks !

this is very helpful. but another potential (slight) inconvenience is that the Arduino language is basically C/C++, but I have some existing code base in java, and Android is basically java.

mrsummitville:
Have you checked out ...

  1. The Intel® Edison module is a SoC (System on Chip) that includes an Intel® Atom™ 500MHz dual-core, dual-threaded CPU and an Intel® Quark™ 100MHz microcontroller ?

  2. The Arduino Tre, based on the Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor. Texas Instruments said that with the Tre's 1GHz processor, it is the "most powerful Arduino to date" and the first that will be able to run "full Linux."

  3. The Alorium Technology "XLR8" – an application accelerator and development board programmed with Arduino. XLR8 provides hardware based Floating Point Math implemented in the FPGA fabric. Functions and operations can be accessed from your sketch by installing our library and using our floating point arithmetic functions.

  4. Intel Galileo is a microcontroller board based on the Intel® Quark SoC X1000 Application Processor, a 32-bit Intel Pentium-class system on a chip

And Java is basically C.

after some research, TRE looks the most promising platform for my use case.

but the TRE release plan seems shelved. news came out end of 2013, but still I can't find it on sale anywhere
do you know if it's being released ?

mrsummitville:
Have you checked out ...

  1. The Intel® Edison module is a SoC (System on Chip) that includes an Intel® Atom™ 500MHz dual-core, dual-threaded CPU and an Intel® Quark™ 100MHz microcontroller ?

  2. The Arduino Tre, based on the Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor. Texas Instruments said that with the Tre's 1GHz processor, it is the "most powerful Arduino to date" and the first that will be able to run "full Linux."

  3. The Alorium Technology "XLR8" – an application accelerator and development board programmed with Arduino. XLR8 provides hardware based Floating Point Math implemented in the FPGA fabric. Functions and operations can be accessed from your sketch by installing our library and using our floating point arithmetic functions.

  4. Intel Galileo is a microcontroller board based on the Intel® Quark SoC X1000 Application Processor, a 32-bit Intel Pentium-class system on a chip

but still I can't find it on sale anywhere do you know if it's being released ?

There was an initial release of a version which sold out in two days or so, but then it has gone quite.
I wouldn't hold my breath.

Note while this is true:-

  1. Intel Galileo is a microcontroller board based on the Intel® Quark SoC X1000 Application Processor, a 32-bit Intel Pentium-class system on a chip

The way it has been designed, with most of the I/O going through the I2C bus, the resulting product is very poor for anything real time.

if Edison is not a good candidate, my best bet now is probably the Beagle Bone Black.

Edison is not a good candidate

Never said anything about the Edison I was talking about the Galileo.

The raspberry pi foundation just released a $5 raspberry pi module. It has 1GHz processor and 512MB ram. Maybe that is good enough?

liudr:
The raspberry pi foundation just released a $5 raspberry pi module. It has 1GHz processor and 512MB ram. Maybe that is good enough?

I think if you try to actually buy one, you'll find the $5 figure is the production cost - the price I saw was nearer £20 ($27)

It actually shows as 5USD at adafruit so I'm going to get one right after the hype and shortage are over. I have RPI 1 and 2 already. This one is just the solution I've not found a problem for yet. Nice to have the possibility of small size and unpopulated pins to integrate on a larger board.

If you need to break out pins on the RPi, I have a screw terminal break out board.
I populate this one from the other side to us with RPis. I have a picture at home, I should post that too.
http://www.crossroadsfencing.com/BobuinoRev17/

RP doesn't have a microcontroller, my use case ultimately will need to collect video frames and do some computer vision processing. if I use RP + arduino controller, the bandwidth requirement between them is too high for serial .

so I have to be looking for some integrated CPU + microcontroller board, such as TRE , Edison, or Beagle Bone Black

liudr:
The raspberry pi foundation just released a $5 raspberry pi module. It has 1GHz processor and 512MB ram. Maybe that is good enough?

Grumpy_Mike:
And Java is basically C.

Touche.

teddyyyy123:
RP doesn't have a microcontroller, my use case ultimately will need to collect video frames and do some computer vision processing. if I use RP + arduino controller, the bandwidth requirement between them is too high for serial .

so I have to be looking for some integrated CPU + microcontroller board, such as TRE , Edison, or Beagle Bone Black

Why do you need the microcontroller when you have the gpio?

What kind of bandwidth from what sensor?

AWOL:
I think if you try to actually buy one, you'll find the $5 figure is the production cost - the price I saw was nearer £20 ($27)

They were free on the cover of the MagPi magazine this month. Mind you they sold out in 1 day. I think the U.S. batch of magazines is going on sale at Barns & Nobel any time now.

A lot of those prices include the leads which are not in the $5.00 price bracket.

Here's the screw shield on a RPi. Phoenix high quality screw 3.5mm screw terminals on one of my boards.