srv-1 blackfin wi-fi camera robot lets you spy from afar

This palm-sized robot can wind its way between the cubicles at your office, snapping digital video of unsuspecting parties with a built in wireless video camera.

The Surveyor SRV-1 Mobile Robot cruises around on smooth and rough surfaces thanks to a pair of tank-like treads, and can be controlled anywhere your Wi-Fi connection can reach. An 802.11 b/g receiver on board the rechargeable ‘bot lets you drive the little guy from any computer on the network – even from across the globe.

Under the hood of the SRV-1 is a powerful 1000MIPS 500MHz Blackfin BF537 processor with 32MB of RAM and 4MB of Flash storage. The robot has a 1280×1024 (1.3 megapixel) color video camera, and can avoid obstacles such as walls thanks to a pair of built-in laser pointers. A 7.2V rechargeable battery pack should let you cruise around for up to 4 hours on a single charge.

And since the robot is powered by open-source code, you can customize the software to your own needs. Me? I’m building Skynet v1.0. Thanks to RoboRealm, I can control my robot army with C/C++, Python, Java, C#, Lisp, Visual Basic, WScript or COM. Of course, I always figured that Skynet would be written in Logo or Whitespace, so I guess I’ll have to rethink my evil plan.

You can get your hands on the SRV-1 robot over at ThinkGeek for $474.99 (USD).