How to connect a robotic car to PC serial port?

[sisso]

I have a robot which I made 3 years ago. It has four motors mounted on a cardboard and a wired remote connected to the motors.
The remote is further connected to DC power supply.
Now, I am working on a project to control a robotic car through human hand gestures.

Please tell me how could I connect the robotic car to PC serial port?

I will write the data to serial port according to gestures input received. And Now My problem is how could I read that data from serial port and control the car.

What the hardware I would need for this?

I asked a friend he told me following things:

1) At Mega 16/32 Development Board
Features:
16*2 LCD support
8 Analogue Sensor Channels
RS-232 Serial Com Support
4 DC motor Support
2) DB9 connector
3) L293D
4) MAX 232
5) LCD

Will these work????

 

[Rusttree]

That's pretty much it.

You'll probably want to get the serial communication working standalone, before you start including the motor components. Hook up the UART (or USART) pins of your uC to the MAX232 and from there into your serial port cable. The MAX232 chip is necessary because your uC will output at TTL levels (0 to 5V, probably), but the RS-232 serial port needs +/-10V or more. The MAX232 takes care of the voltage conversions for you.