Hi Shah,
There are quite a few options available for robotic observatories. Much of the decision obviously comes back to the size of the instrument you intend to put in the observatory. From a software perspective, Bob Denny takes a lot of credit. He is the founder/developer of
ASCOM, a universal driver library for hardware and an common interface for other programs to interact with. Without this, it makes robotic operation difficult to say the least.
From some further info on robotic observatories and software, please check out these links.
http://www.robosky.com/index.php
http://phys-astro.sonoma.edu/observatory/roboscope/
http://www.thinkingtelescopes.lanl.gov/
http://www.nelsonbay.com/~gc/observa...s/Page1808.htm
http://www.astro.physik.uni-goetting...NET/links.html
http://hou.lbl.gov/rtml/
http://www.astro.physik.uni-goetting...~hessman/RTML/
Weather stations are also important (certainly if you're not about to monitor the environment), but there are some major advancements in these also.
http://www.cyanogen.com/products/cloud_main.htm.