iRobot: Home Cleaning to Home Surveillance

iRobot has improved its Roombas and Scoobas for vacuuming floors and scrubbing them clean, and now its come up with a clever way to clean pesky house gutters with its new $100 Looj. But the big news from the home robot maker is its latest creation which doesn't clean a thing.

The ConnectR (pictured) is a camera-equipped robot with a speaker that can be controlled via the Internet to roam a home and communicate with family members while parents are away, or with far-flung family members when everyone is home.

Via the web, you can direct the ConnectR through several rooms to check on and talk with your pet during the day and check in with the kids after they get home from school before you're home from work. 

The webcam lens will have wide-angle and zoom functions. Lights can be activited to see where the ConnectR is going and focusing on. Other color-coded lights can be activated to indicate the mood of the person at the Internet controls. Red means I'm mad the TV is on. Green, I'm happy the homework is done. Yikes! There's a privacy mode in case the people at home don't want to be spied on. And you can assign several passwords to different users to access while away from home.

My former colleague at the The Star-Ledger, Kevin Coughlin, says the ConnectR "looks like a rolling bedpan, with about as much personality," and he's onto something there.

Truly, I can't envision have a rolling eye and speaker traverse my house with me at a computer asking my 10-year-old to show me her completed math homework or chastising my son for putting on ESPN while his sisters are still doing homework. But that doesn't mean it won't happen in homes one day soon. As for keeping in touch with family members on the road, I think streamlined, easy-to-use webcam and calling applications will be the way that will happen. I'll be writing about a new service called OoVoo, which makes conducting multiple-person webcam calls look remarkably simple.

Now, if the ConnectR would clean while its keeping us in touch with home life... that could be appealing. 

iRobot is introducing the ConnectR into homes first through a pilot beta program, which will offer the robot to families for $199. You can find more info about the pilot program on iRobot's web site. When it hits the market next year, it will be priced at $499. "How are people going to use it? We don't know," says iRobot spokesman Nancy Dussault Smith. 

So what do you think? Could you see using a robot to check in on the kids, or on your home while away on vacation? Let's hear it.