That’s the idea behind [BetaChecker’s] two-axis stepper motor, which looks like it has a lot of potential for some interesting applications.

Driving stepper motors is a perfect example: you can grab a cheap controller board, hook it up to a microcontroller, and the rest is essentially just software.

[Part 1 begins a look at how to interface with some common robotics-type sensors and actuators, and how these can be tied into an example system (in this case, the author's E-2 Autonomous Submarine ...