Controlling a Robot Over the Internet

For controlling my robot over the internet I thought about having a laptop with the visual basic program to directly control the robot. Then a second computer with remote assistance turned on can control the laptop remotely over the internet. The program on the laptop controls the robot directly through the USB port. I want to be able to run that program on the laptop form anywhere in the world. Is this possible to do? Is there an easier way to do this?

Yes, that would be possible to do. Actually, that would be the simplist. The more practial (yet harder way) would be to get an ethernet module, and interface it to a microcontroller.

If you want to do custom software with a nice graphic interface (possibly transmitting data from the robot itself) there's a programming language called Processing, which is based in Java, which has client/server ability as it easy for people that understand basic C to program in.
https://www.processing.org/

Designing the USB interface to the robot will be just as, or more, difficult than using an ethernet IC and a microcontroller to serve up a micro web page to control the robot. If you intend to use a camera with the robot and actually see what is going on over the web, then the laptop/USB idea will be the easiest way.

That's one big reason I suggested processing, it has serial port support, serial ports can do video audio and general interfaces easily, as long as at least some thought is put into things like compression.

with these controllers you can do the same thing fairly easy
**broken link removed**

I built a rc paintball tank and my next step is to bolt my laptop to it and control it over the internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhJpYHz38PA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS9pGOxQ10Q