A direct effect of the latest evolutions in technology and communications is the very rapid development of various hi-tech surveillance methods, one of the latest and most advanced brand of devices that can be used for this purpose being surveillance-enabled personal robots. And that's exactly the family of devices where the following little guy (Spy-Cye from Probotics) belongs, since it's an extremely simple device which acts exactly like a mobile surveillance camera.



The first thing worth mentioning about this robot is the fact that we're not dealing with a simple machine capable of obeying orders. Its software is actually capable of “learning” the position of various objects within the owner's residence, and avoid them whenever it operates on its own, without any direct control.



However, as mentioned before, the main function Spy-Cye has to carry out is surveillance, and that's why it has been fitted with a video camera broadcasting a continuous video stream towards the user's computer, via radio waves. In his turn, the user can employ the same method in order to control the robot, via a highly intuitive graphics user interface dubbed Map-N-Zap.



As mentioned earlier, the Spy-Cye needs to be “trained” before you can actually take advantage of its features. Thus, you first teach it the location of its home base. Then, it learns what's out there by mapping free space to white and obstacles to black on the screen. You can map out space to the extent of the radio range which is 100 feet.



Moreover, at any time, you can simply click on the home base and it will navigate back to it on its own and charge itself. It can run around for a full two hours before needing a charge.



The Spy-Cye sells for around 1,000 US dollars at various retailers, which is a bit much to pay for such a device, but it's actually pretty worth it, given just how innovative and useful this thing could prove to be.