Instructables hosted an iRobot Create competition a little while ago, and one of the third place winners was Damon Kohler’s OLPC Telepresence bot. It mashes two of my favorite consumer product designs into a cute mutant bot that’s controllable via a web interface.

Rather than a huge electronics/robotics exercise, this project is fairly accessible to anyone with a little programming know-how. Aside from some simple wiring, the majority of the work is in the software. Damon has created a high level Python interface, called PyRobot, for controlling the Create and interfacing with the OLPC’s webcam. With an afternoon of effort, you could be hacking your own little telepresence bot that you can view and control over the internet.

OLPC Telepresence Instructable – Link
PyRobot – Link
OLPC Telepresence Project Blog – Link