long story short - Ive been tasked by my boss to create a new robot for cleaning A/C ducting as our current one is rather, well to be honest it works fine but has a few annoyances such as too many cables [compressed air hose, controller cable and USB cable that has 4-5 amplifiers on it] and its too low and gets stuck on screws and other pointy things, and it was tasked to me as im quite knowledgeable in this area, not as knowledgeable as i wish though thats why im asking for help

Basically the robot has to be tank like, you know with the tracks and all that, have a camera on the front and back along with dimmable lights, be controlled by a laptop WITHOUT wireless technology [ducting interferes with it, tried it before] and not use a USB cable with amplifiers.
so far we've got a chassis for it, ive googled ma butt off and i think we're gonna go with a Phidgets SBC and a pair motor drivers
where im really stuck is writing the program to be able to drive the robot, dim the lights and be connected by an Ethernet cable [i chose ethernet cable purely for the bandwidth as some of these ducts can be as long as 200 meters and its less likley to loose too much data over the distance]
so if anyone can help me with the programming and suggest a few ideas, dont be like the last forum joined and just suggest changing everything and not even mention any kind of progamming
might also help to mention that im very good with computers and electronics, however im newish to coding [gave pawn scripting a go a few years ago when i discovered u could modify GTA: San Adreas