While browsing the CES coverage on Engadget this morning I saw this item on the IRobot "Create" model - essentially a Roomba intended for robotics hackers, without the cleaning bits. This has previously only been known from FCC filings, but IRobot are now offering it for sale (sadly their web site only seems to sell to North American customers)...If you include all the accessories that I'd personally want, the price is actually about the same as a Roomba Discovery, which isn't too bad.
I have lately had increasing difficulty resisting the urge to buy a Roomba and send away for a Rootooth unit, especially having satisified myself with my recent GPS experiments that coding serial communications over Bluetooth really is as easy as everyone says it is (I know, why wouldn't it be?...but I've learned to be guided by Murphy's Law, so it's nice to see that it is. But that's enough about that).
The IRobot Create really looks like exactly the kind of thing I'm interested in (as in, I was actually thinking the other day "What I'd really like is a Roomba with expansion points and without all the vacuumy bits")...the big issue for me now is whether anyone in New Zealand is actually going to stock it. The Roomba has made it into appliance shops such as LV Martin & Son (one I know that carries it locally) on the strength of its status as a vacuum cleaner...unfortunately that won't apply to the Create model.
I hope somebody carries it, or I'm going to be a very frustrated would-be mad robot hacker.