Rovio now navigating to a store near you

On Monday WowWee, makers of CNET Editor Bonnie Cha's favorite work companion, RoboSapien, announced that Rovio the roving robotic web camera is now beginning to show up at select e-tailers as well.

While Wrex is cute and all, he doesn't really serve any functional purpose. Rovio however is cute and extremely functional. His three roving wheels allow him to move in pretty much any direction. Using an indoor GPS system Rovio is able to, quite impressively, find his way around the house.

His WiFi-enabled webcam allows you to see whatever Rovio sees from anywhere in the world. You can access Rovio via a compatible cell phone or your PC from the Web. Let's say you're on vacation and you want to make sure your cats have enough food in their bowl. You can remotely send Rovio over to their kettle--no doubt, horrifying them--and get a streamed MPEG4 video and audio feed. You can even take pictures and email them to whomever you'd like.

Although the official releases date is September 26, so far only two e-tailers that we know of currently have Rovio listed on their Web sites.

* Hammacher Schlemmer for US$299.95 Pre-order

Via Crave Net