Despite all the buy one and a child gets it promotions around the variable priced OLPC, the XO laptop is essentially a cheap Linux box, which means it’s also very hackable.

In the video below, you see FIDO, a telepresence enabled Roomba/OLPC. In this incarnation, it lacks the night vision and 100 lumen LCD headlamp since added, but a video is always better than a picture.

Damon Kohler rewrote iRobot’s openinterface.py into a higher level interface, which he calls PyRobot. It enables the rig to be controlled from a web browser, accessing the OLPCs webcam and microphone to show the operator what is going on. And that browser interface? It’s not just for local use: You can control the ‘bot over the internet.

If you happen to have the requisite gear (and Kohler’s rewrite of the code means it works with older Roombas, too), there’s a step-by-step how-to on Instructables. For armchair hackers, the blog has plenty of pictures and robot pr0n.

Project blog [Damon Kohler via Hackzine]