I had wanted to do something like this since I got the iPhone last summer. At the moment it's a rough draft of sorts. The current interface shows the video feed from the Packbot, and provides a directional pad for driving the robot and adjusting the flippers. I feel like I have the basic code needed to communicate with the Packbot, but what's really interesting are the possibilities introduced by the iPhone's unique interface, so that's the next step. I plan to experiment with the iPhone's accelerometers, and with the multi-touch interface for interacting with the robot. In the YouTube video below you can see some promising initial results of the work:
Here's some of the press that this got on the bigger blogs around the net:
I'd like to thank Jeff Craighead, Kevin Pratt, and Greg Higley for helping me out in various ways while working on this project.
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