If you know me, you know I love my Roomba Scheduler. I was an early adopter of Roomba in 2002, and I’ve loved it ever since. Sure, we still have an upright to get the messes produced by two active children, but Roomba does a great job of heading under beds and furniture to get dust bunnies before they multiply.
iRobot is coming out with a new product in 2008 with a limited beta in 2007. I signed up for the beta list right away. With any luck, I’ll get into the beta group. The ConnectR is a Roomba shaped bot with a small web cam mounted on it. It connects to your in home wireless network, and it can be controlled remotely through a custom application. It was two way audio (but sadly, the video is only one way). The idea is to let parents, relatives and friends have a window into your world. I see it mainly working as a way to show grandparents, aunts and uncles what the kids are doing, and occasionaly Sandra will let me hook up to see what is going on with the kids during the day.
The next step of course is to allow the control through a standard web browser so you don’t have to deploy an application. I’d love to control the thing using my iPod Touch and Safari.
