Build a High-End Telepresence Robot with a Roomba and a LattePanda

Telepresence robots are a bit of an odd type of product in the tech world. The idea is that you can transport yourself, and physically move about in another location. In reality, most commercial telepresence robots end up just looking like a tablet bolted onto a drivable coat rack. Rubin Huang was interested in owning a telepresence robot, but wasn’t satisfied with the features he found in commercial products — or their high prices.

So, Huang did what any good maker would, and built his own. The result is Teleroomba, and it’s one of the most feature-packed telepresence robots we’ve ever seen. As the name suggests, the movement for the robot is a provided by an iRobot Create 2 Programmable Robot, which is the hacker-friendly version of the classic Roomba. That in itself is an interesting product; the folks over at iRobot noticed people loved hacking their Roombas, and decided to offer one specifically for that market (made from remanufactured Roombas, and sans vacuum).

The brain for the whole Teleroomba is a LattePanda, which is a great little product that we’d love to see more of around here. While Huang considered using a Raspberry Pi, the extra power and Windows 10 compatibility of the LattePanda is what his project really needed. The LattePanda is essentially a Windows 10 mini PC, combined with an Arduino-compatible coprocessor and development board.

A monopod framework attached to the Create 2 is used to attach cameras (including a Ricoh Theta 360° camera) and a display to Teleroomba. When combined with a joystick and VR headset, Huang is able to drive the robot around with a full 360° view, and camera pan/tilt is controlled by his head movement. Connectivity is handled with WebRTC, which can stream video and provide a data link between the robot and the user via Google Chrome. While the total build cost was still pricey (more than $700), it is competitive with commercial telepresence robots with far less functionality.