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R/C
R/C It's convenient for lots of different droids to be Remote Controlled. There are numerous ways of doing that, and a few will be mentioned here.
FWIW: shorthand for Transmitter is Tx, and Receiver is Rx.
Contents
Traditional R/C
Typically 2.4Ghz nowadays, this can be a nearly ready-to-run system for a mouse droid. Buy an R/C car and slap a mouse shell on it. (Of course it's not quite that easy). Most decent R/C radio transmitters are sync'd to their receivers and you can run multiple systems near each other. Older systems have a fixed frequency and can interfere with each other.
Different styles of receivers can be used to control droids, its just what kind of controller you prefer.
Car R/C
More about R/C Cars
A car RC system typically has a controller with a steering wheel and a throttle lever. 2 channel car R/C systems can be really cheap, with one channel for steering and another for the wheel. HobbyKing 2 Channel Car Type
Car type receivers are usually connected to a servo for steering and a motor controller/ESC for the forward/reverse motor speed.
R/C Car Wiki page.
Airplane R/C
Airplane R/C often have two sticks that each move 2 directions for a total of 4 channels. There are 2 standard "modes" which describe which stick has an unsprung throttle control. Mode 2 is most common in the US and has the throttle on the left stick. Mode 1 has the throttle on the right stick. Of course droids can use the throttle channel for other things, but it's good to know which stick is fully sprung.
Airplane RC transmitters can be fairly cheap, but droid builders often prefer the maximum number of channels because that gives them other buttons to make control gizmos on the droid. Several builders use the [Turnigy 9X] because it's the cheapest one with 8 channels (though it sends 9 it only has 8 on the receiver)
Programming Turnigy 9X for "Tank" control has more info about using the V-Tail mode of the Turnigy 9X to handle "tank" model, which is convenient for many droids.
Computer / Phone
Some systems use a tablet of phone for control, there are different mechanisms to get the signal to the droid, but the idea is that a program (typically touch) sends signals to a transmitter, which the receiver then interprets, usually with a microcontroller.
Game Controller
Other systems use a wireless game controller, like an XBox controller, to control the droid. These typically have lots of readily accessible buttons and so can be a good choice. Typically the receiver has a microcontroller to actually do something with the signals.
Sound Controllers
Many droid builders use an additional remote to control their sounds. The most common is a 12 button remote connected to something like the Sparkfun MP3 Trigger board.