The robotic industry has become more efficient and even buying a robot without selling your house has become a reality. Now, a new affordable and flexible mobile robot can be purchased by researchers, hobbyists and developers in the industrial and service robot segments, from $2,499 to $3,499 depending on optional equipment and choice of configuration.

CoroBot is a new robot developed by Coroware that has a PC-class CPU, a color camera and other on-board sensors, and it even comes with a robotic arm capable of four degrees of freedom as an optional equipment. "With CoroBot, we specifically designed the system to minimize the complexity of robotic development," said Lloyd Spencer, president of CoroWare Technologies. "After completing tests to confirm interoperability between CoroBot and Microsoft Robotics Studio, we are even more confident that our mobile robot platform will be a powerful productivity tool for robotics application developers."

It has a 1.2 GHZ CPU, with 512 MB of RAM, and a 20 GB HDD. At first glance, it may look like a box on four wheels, but this design is actually helping him overcome many rough terrain obstacles, while being low enough to enter small spaces like caves or medium to large pipes.

The external dimensions are 12"L x 13"W x 10"T (16"T w/ arm) and four wheel traction. For navigation and data transmissions, it's equipped with a 640x480 color camera and front and back IR sensors.

The robot can collect samples due to its 5 lbs. base payload capacity and the arm is capable of lifting 8 oz. of material at a time.

The autonomy provided by its 10 AH battery is estimated at 2.5 hours, which is very good when considering that a notebook has roughly the same battery duration. It also has 8 electrical inputs and just as many outputs, for data storage and collection.

Overall, this versatile robot has all it needs to become the newest boy toy for all the Dexters wanting to explore the world.