Old Roombas used to come with a serial port so you could use drive the motors and use it as a robot base. Then, you stick a wireless router and a webcam on top - no raspberry pi in those days.
I maintain(ed) node bindings[1] for the old Roomba din OI serial protocol. Although it's targeting the old "create" educational series, it actually works on all Roombas predating the 900 series!
