Last year we made it very decorative, and used a wooden frame with, i think, lexan. Which was painted over for our Peter Pan theme, and we also used arcade buttons, donated by a teammate, to control the upper half of the robot. The big problems with this though were it was through together towards the end of the season, and therefore very flimsy. Also they way we made it the O/I was very large, but I'm confident that if you spend more than a day and a half on your board you guys can have a great O/I, here's the one picture I could find, it shows the right side of the O/I which used arcade buttons to position the arm at different positions, a joystick for more control of the claw and arm, and a painted easy button to open and close the claw.
http://team1930.coasterfuel.com/Phot...1/DSC02899.JPG