[Blunt]

seriously, I don't get it. There are tons of off-the-shelf electronic kits that already do this (ARM, PIC, AVAR, etc)... And most of this is just simple logic. Follow a light beam, follow color, bla, bla, bla... Anything really useful, to me, appears one would need a bit more than a smart phone. Honda's robot comes to mind and that quadraped that supposedly is suppose to help military carry heavy things through tough terrain.

[skybrian]

A smart phone has a camera (possibly two), a microphone, a display, speakers, and WiFi. I'm thinking it would make it quite fun to drive remotely, perhaps on a table top for video conferencing.

[Florin_Andrei]

The Romo is something a primary school kid could assemble.

I'm actually doing various projects (robotics-related and non-related) with AVR and Arduino, and they are definitely not primary-school-friendly.

[Blunt]

so a $400 iPhone or even a $200 smart phone is a better option than some of the $25 robot kits you can buy that have much more to learn from?

not buying it.

[Florin_Andrei]

(sigh) You don't have kids, do you?

It's not about price, it's about complexity. Plugging an old iPhone into a chassis is something anyone could do, even my 6 year old son. Programming an AVR from scratch is something many adults cannot do.