Grigoriy Reshko shows a Palm Pilot controlled robot that he helped develop at the school's lab at Carnegie Mellon University on Jan. 17.
Free software enables the three-wheeled robot to follow a wall or roam a room for hours.
It won't fetch the paper, but it doesn't bite the mailman either. Nursebots, Battlebots Robot makers have created kits that will convert the same Palm handheld computer that plans someone's day into a simple machine that can follow him or her around the room like a puppy. Mostly for fun. Acroname Inc. of Boulder, Colo., got a license to assemble the kits from mail-order parts, with the first hitting the market in November. The difference is in how much effort it takes to put together - the more expensive one requires only a screwdriver, while the other needs some some gluing and wiring.