Help on making a talking Robot

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Basically, I would like the robot to go around and greet people. This small robot will speak by a microphone connected via USB to a laptop housed within the frame of the robot. The person that controls where the robot goes will hide in a nearby location, connect to the robot's laptop from their laptop via skype, and the robot will say their words in a robotic voice.

So is there a microphone like this that connects to a computer via USB and can sound nice and crisp? I would also need some advice on a voice synthesizer and how that might work with a skype connection between two laptops. Any easier or more cost effective solutions?

Also, I'd like to mold some nice, professional plastic covering for the robot when done. I'm not sure what material is best for this or if I need special melding equipment. If you can link me to a tutorial that would be great. I've looked, and I just don't think I know the right terminology to get a good search result. Thank you for all your help.

Blue (http://bluemic.com/) make some really good USB microphones, far better than internal or most headset microphones. I think that two laptops connected by Skype is technical overkill, and probably not the most reliable solution.

You could connect a standard bluetooth headset (or might even find some good quality bluetooth microphone), but the sound quality is not going to be great and the range is about 10 meters line of sight.

A better connection might be a network audio server like VLC, which will run on most platforms. A fixed IP address makes connection easier, but is not essential - it certainly makes automatic connection in a script simpler. Focusright Rednet (http://global.focusrite.com/rednet) is a beautiful system if you have money to spend on the project.