Comment by chasd00

Adafruit is your friend. Get one of their feather boards, an imu breakout, motor controller and then a simple robot chassis + motors from Amazon. Code in circuit python and save yourself the build chain and debug hell that is traditional embedded programming. Circuitpython / micropython is great, well supported, and makes embedded programming more fun. You’ll encounter the haters see it as training wheels but trust me, it’s great.

Edit: you could take a more top down approach and get like an ardupilot, use it in rover mode, and just really learn how to configure and use it to its full potential which is pretty far out there. There’s also a lua scripting capability last time I checked.