Holidays in 2020 are a little different. My family is spread out around the country, and due to the pandemic we're unable to gather together. To include other family members in our holiday celebrations, I built a telepresence robot from a Raspberry Pi, a Snap Circuits rover, and an iPad.

Love it! Due to a back condition, a friend had to work remotely for a year, and her office got her one of those commercial ipad based telepresence robots - she loved it and really helped her feel in the office.

Great you've been able to get the vast majority of the benefits so cheaply!

iRobot actually makes a dev platform that would work great for this: https://store.irobot.com/default/create-programmable-program...

Its not much more at $200 and gets you all the sensors on a roomba (bump, cliff, etc), return to dock, charging, virtual walls, etc.

Great suggestion. The extra sensors in particular would be a welcome improvement. I had the Snap Circuits rover on hand already, so my total outlay was about $20.

A big question when building the base is whether it's heavy/wide enough to be stable. Mounting the tablet up high is great for interaction, but results in a high center of gravity and a long moment arm conspiring to cause instability. From the specs it looks like the iRobot might be both heavier and wider than the Snap Circuits rover, so it might be a great choice.

Oh my cow that is awesome. I must investigate.

Neat project. I'm a big fan of Snap Circuits so this was a cool project to see. I'm thinking of doing something similar with Sphero RVR. My biggest worry is charging the base. The ideal solution seems like a roomba (with charging base).

Another commenter referenced a programmable roomba from iRobot - see above. I agree that might be ideal. The RVR might not be stable enough to haul around a tablet sitting atop what amounts to a big lever, but a camera mounted (low) on an RVR could be a lot of fun.

IMHO I feel like adding a periscope would keep your pricey phone or tablet closer to the ground and less likely to be destroyed if the platform tips over.

Part of the goal was to have a large image of the remote person’s face at a height that’s comfortable for interaction and conversation, which necessitates a screen mounted fairly high up.

To your point, I bet a picoprojector mounted down low could be made to project onto a lightweight screen in place of the tablet.

(The tablet arrangement worked well enough in practice, and we used a tablet that had already suffered child-related damage)

Ah, you're right, I forgot about being able to see grandma's face.