This little gem came to me courtesy of my friend Greg Baker, who is a lecturer in Computer Science at Simon Fraser University. Thanks Greg! This one was too cool to pass up.

Gåågle - It’s not as weird to pronounce as you’d think. It’s actually pronounced like Google and you’ll begin to see why soon enough. Gåågle Bot is a modified remote-control Roomba that bears a webcam, fueled by real-time AJAX calls that zips around taking pictures and indexing the real world as it sees it. Vacuum, index. I love efficiency!

!

The name GåågleBot is a play on the words gÃ¥ and google bot. The Swedish word for go is gåå. Googlebot, is the name of Google’s web indexer. If you don’t know what Google is, you are either lying or out of luck. Hence GåågleBot is a “going” indexer, indexing the real world around us while vacuuming your home at the same time! Can’t find that library book that is due tomorrow? Relax, just Gåågle it!

Excited about this bot? Head over here and give it a try. There is also a pretty nifty video as well showing the bot in action. The main site has all of the components listed, the source code, and other tidbits to get you started building your own remote-control crawler.