You may not have heard of the company iRobot, but you’ve probably heard of their two robot products, the Roomba, a vacuum cleaner, and the Scooba, a mop. Both of these products have gained a significant following in the hacking community, most notably the Roomba. People have gone so far as to have their MacBook Pro’s accelerometer control their Roomba (skip ahead 45 seconds for the good stuff) via Bluetooth. If that’s not a sweet hack, I don’t know what is. Thanks to all those crazy hacks, iRobot has figured out that there’s a market for a very customizable little robot, which is the basis of their new product: Create.

It looks like a half empty Roomba, and it pretty much is. Built in are over 32 different sensors that lets the Create react to external and internal events. Plus, 3rd party electronics, like a web cam or wireless dongle, can be popped into the ample cargo bay for use. And for current Roomba/Scoobas owners, all previous iRobot accessories are compatible with the Create, including the virtual walls and batteries. If you’ve got good enough programming skills, you could conceivably have your Create fetch things for you, or wake you up as it serves as a “moving” alarm clock. And there’s definitely going to be communities popping up that are dedicated the Create which will most definitely offer up some awesome programs you can use on your Create.

For $229, you get the Create Starter Kit which includes the Create unit itself, the $60 command module, and a battery. Not bad at all, considering the capability it has. The only bad note, the Create only supports XP, so for Mac users, look towards Boot Camp or Parallels.

Product Page - [via Shiny Shiny]