For one, it's nice having the evented framework. Pretty much everything on the robot from user input to GPS pinging is modeled well by async events. Node.js als

For one, it's nice having the evented framework. Pretty much everything on the robot from user input to GPS pinging is modeled well by async events. Node.js also has some nice libraries for websockets, which make for good real-time user input from a web interface. Third, we didn't actually need anything that complicated. All we needed to was talk over serial and websockets (pretty much). Fourth, it was just fun to play around with, and I am highly amused that I can say I built a robot that is controlled almost entirely through JavaScript. I would be the first to admit that this doesn't NEED to be written in JavaScript. I can't speak much to autonomous systems except that this might be a good area for event-driven processes, if nothing else.