Roomba hacking sounds promising, but THIS seems a little extreme doesn't it?

The iRobot company is opening the Roomba's robotic vacuum to third part developers.

In early July the company will post instructions for controlling its Roomba vacuum cleaner via the built-in serial port, so programmers can modify it however they want -- from equipping it with a camera to, yes, adding an arm and training it to retrieve brewskis. iRobot hopes the move will foster the development of Roomba accessories -- like the ecosystem of add-ons that has sprung up around the iPod -- thus driving sales.

Others are already contemplating using the Roomba as a sort of robotic security camera - allowing you to control a mobile home camera from a webpage.

This is just in time for the third generation Roombas that will be released later this summer.