The BlackFin Surveyor is an open source Wireless Mobile Robot comes fully assembled for use in research, education, and exploration at home. For example, it can be a robotic guardian around your house via the internet. Or you could make things more exciting and send it into a nuclear wasteland and search for zombies. Think of it as a robotic webcam recording and archiving all that it sees using its digital sensors.  Awesome!  You can also buy one at ThinkGeek.

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The palm sized internet-controlled robot is made up of a digital video camera with resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels, laser pointer for optional ultrasonic ranging, and WLAN 802.11b/g networking, all mobile on a tracked base. The Java based console software has a built-in web server making it controllable online from anywhere in the world using a browser. The firmware programming is written in C language under GPL Open Source license.

SRV1Q topSurveyor website.  The best thing about this tiny robot is that you can manually control it via the internet or let it roam about on its own. The robot has a bit of artificial intelligence and can be designed for autonomous operation.  If you have an Apple iPhone, try out the Befree4iPhone remote control program. Originally intended to let you remote control your PC using an iPhone or an EDGE enabled device, the freeware can also be directly used to control the SRV-1.

If you don’t have time to build it, you can pick one up fully assembled at ThinkGeek. If you have some programming knowledge, then fiddling around with the source code is half the fun.

Souirce: Hacknmod.com