A robot with a webcam for a head which can be driven around the home remotely and transmit what it sees via wi-fi is among a fleet of 'intelligent devices' to go on sale at PC World.

The 1ft-tall robot, which has caterpillar track wheels and can record images and sound from its surrounds – effectively enabling it to become a remote-controlled spy – will go on sale in autumn as part of a wider push by the retailer into robotics.

In all 12 robots, ranging in price from £200 to £2,000, will be sold by PC World in the run-up to Christmas. A spokesman for the store said that robotics will play "an increasingly important role in the field of consumer technology in the year ahead."

Spyke – as the £200 spy robot is called – will be able to transmit messages from its owners via wireless broadband, "so, for instance, you can pass on a video message to your nanny, having seen something in the house," the spokesman said.

The device can store and play MP3s, and can also be programmed to send a picture via e-mail when objects in its view – a sleeping child, perhaps – move. It will also be able to find its base station when it runs out of batteries.

Among the other robots in the Robo-shop range will be a £2,000 scale model of R2D2 which can project DVDs and console games onto a wall or screen, and a companion-type robot which was described by a PC World spokesman as "a Tamagotchi for adolescents".

"Hardly a day goes by without a development in robotics," the spokesman said. "In the past it was just child's play – dinosaurs that walked and the like – but these things have real utility and are the shape of things to come."

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