Roomba reincarnated to be Oscar the telepresence robot

This particular Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner is not exactly the in thing at the moment, but you know the proverb – waste not, want not. What do you do with a partially destroyed Roomba? Why, the answer would be to take it in, restore it while performing some tinkering with its innards and throwing in additional parts, and you end up with a telepresence robot which can be controlled over a Google+ Hangout. While this telepresence robot will not make an appearance at the Academy Awards anytime soon, it still has been dubbed “Oscar”, and can be controlled by any of the participants in that particular video chat session. Of course, having something as fun as this might translate to you having a hard time relinquishing control to the rest of your mates.

The robot’s view can be seen by everyone as there is a tablet with a webcam that is mounted on it. Those who are near Oscar can also check out the particular Hangout session that is going on, how neat is that?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Robots
Tags: Google, hangouts, roomba