Kids today have it so good. Case in point: the above radio-controlled water toy. I was surfing through C|Net’s “Crave” blog the other day when I saw that thing; a radio-controlled water cannon. If I’d seen that as a kid I’d have dreamt of them. I know because I’m already dreaming about how to use them!

Of course the first thing that came to mind was the example I provided for a hyper-connected oil containment system (reLink). Don’t think we’ll see that anytime soon. But imagine that the radio control was interfaced to the internet. Add a camera to these things, put two of them in a pool, and let people control them via the net; either on a simple website showing two icons on a blue field with the camera feed alongside, or as part of an immersive environment like Second Life where positional data could be fed back as well and control the 3D representations. Fun.

Of course, by the time you added everything you needed to the water cannons themselves, they’d probably wind up sinking to the bottom. Fortunately, I expect someone is going to try this so it’s only a matter of time before we read about it. My bet is that the folks over at Make: will have something about it soon enough, so stay tuned.

{Note: Just a quick reminder that iRobot have the ready-for-hacking version of the Roomba, the iRobot Create (Link), which goes for the same price. Nice review on botmag – Link.}

{Image Copyright © 2007 Frontgate}