I have to say that iRobot's "Create" is probably one of the most interesting things I�ve seen until now. The project�s details first emerged a few weeks ago when the device appeared on the FCC database for the first time. But the company didn�t leave the development of the robot in air and said that they will mass produce the robot in the near future. It seems that �near future� is now because, at the moment, the company has started to offer a trimmed down version of its vacuum cleaner robot as a fully programmable machine.

The Create kit is - as was expected - based on the Roomba the vacuuming robot, which has been a big success and sold several millions of units. The new robot is compatible with Roomba's rechargeable batteries, remote control and all other accessories. iRobot hopes that this new project will be useful to high-school and college students but might be also used by robot developers. The �Create� design hopes to introduce a new, easier approach regarding the development of robots.

The manufacturer claims that a "variety of methods and programming languages" can be used to control the �Create� machine. Enthusiasts can observe the robot's behavior, regarding this, there are ten demonstration modes implemented onto the hardware, or they can even program the robot directly by using already precompiled scripts while advanced robot builders can write their own code for "completely autonomous robot behavior" in C or C++ using the bundled software (iRobot Command Module).

Developers can create custom software and interact with the �Create� machine also by using Microsoft Robotics Studio development toolkit which is available for Windows platforms. The iRobot Create is already shipping and has a price tag of $130.