A Telepresence Robot for the Grandparents

My wife and I had a baby recently, and my parents are oh-so eager to meet her. Since they are halfway around the world, though, they'll have to wait until we visit. In the meantime, I made a budget telepresence robot, so they can watch the baby while she's on her swing from any angle they want ( but from a hamster's point of view!). For telepresence, a videochat application running on the phone will technically do, but for the moment, it'll broadcast one-way using IPWebcam

While not as elaborate as OSCAR, by Google's Gus Class, my project was put together in a couple of days and cost next to nothing.

I used:

1. The Arduino and Bluetooth module previously in the quadruped
2. The old Android phone previously in the Headshot
3. Python + Flask and some JavaScript for the web server application
4. One El-Cheapo robot chassis off ebay.
5. A single L293D motor driver.

Crude and basic, but it works.

The Robot in action

A couple of days before this post, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen controlled a robot from Low Earth Orbit from the ISS (altitude of 400 km) . It gave me certain satisfaction to see my robot move in Australia, while being controlled by my brother in South America!