Although I confess that I am fascinated by robot lawnmowers (somebody up the block from me has one) and robot vacuum cleaners (I have friends who say a dog is a better autonomous unit for cleaning up food particles), I haven’t really been moved to buy one. The White Box Robotics 912 family of so-called pc-bots is a different story.

The 912 unit is basically a robotics platform; it runs on a Windows operating system and can use off-the-shelf components. It comes with a Windows-based application to control the robot. It is a GUI-based application that provides vision-based navigation, object recognition, speech recognition, speech synthesis and other features. The company shows several versions so you can see what is possible.

The 912 “MP3″ version features a DVD-ROM device with a 5.5 inch screen on the back of the robot for playing games or watching movies. You can tell the robot to play mp3’s, or burn them to a disk to give to friends. The 912 “HMV” version shows its tough-guy side as a sentry-duty robot. But beware, the 912 is not functional out of the box, it’s up to the hobbyist to add their own parts and customize it.