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iRobot Develops Hamster-Guided Robotic Vacuum
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Mar 04, 2009 02:00 PM
from the cat-powered-would-be-too-smart dept.
from the cat-powered-would-be-too-smart dept.
carusoj writes "The folks at iRobot apparently have plenty of time on their hands. They created a prototype wireless, robotic vacuum cleaner... powered by a hamster running inside a spinning ball. The rodent's movements with the ball are fed to and analyzed by a complex set of sensors, which then guide the actual vacuum device to mimic the animal's speed and direction. You can see where this is going: it's a clever ploy to then get you to buy a second robot that would automatically feed, water, and clean up after the hamster in the first robot."
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Somehow we have to get a cat involved in this. (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't iRobot the company that got the Big DoD Contract to make battlebots? Are we about to see the use of Militarized Hamsters in combat? Will our heroic soldiers be replaced by Rodent Guided Missiles?
Is "Rodent Guided Missiles" a Great Name For A Rock Band, or what?
Re:Somehow we have to get a cat involved in this. (Score:4, Funny)
Steve Jobs? Are you listening?!
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Re:Somehow we have to get a cat involved in this. (Score:5, Funny)
They'll all be named "Boo" and be given extensive training in how to go for the eyes!!!
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Re:Somehow we have to get a cat involved in this. (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't iRobot the company that got the Big DoD Contract to make battlebots? Are we about to see the use of Militarized Hamsters in combat? Will our heroic soldiers be replaced by Rodent Guided Missiles?
I was going to ask the same thing. In WWII the military had a pigeon-guided bomb where the bird was trained to peck at an image on a CRT and the bomb would center on that pecking. Seemed impossibly Rube Golburg but it was supposed to have worked. Never was deployed in combat. They had another one where tiny incendiary charges were attached to bats. The idea was that bombers would fly over Japan with these bat bombs at the ready. The bombs would be dropped over the target, descend by parachute and the sides would pop off so the bats could fly out. They would look for roof overhangs to nest under and their bombs would go off soon thereafter, setting fire to entire cities. The concept was proven sound when the bat people burned down half of their own research camp but the war was over before they could be put into action.
I fear the only way to defeat these hamster-guided killer robots will be to put cats in robots of their own. But then someone will put dogs in the robots and to defeat the dogs someone will put Koreans in robots and it all ends with gorillas freezing in the snow.
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Re:Somehow we have to get a cat involved in this. (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't iRobot the company that got the Big DoD Contract to make battlebots? Are we about to see the use of Militarized Hamsters in combat? Will our heroic soldiers be replaced by Rodent Guided Missiles?
I was going to ask the same thing. In WWII the military had a pigeon-guided bomb where the bird was trained to peck at an image on a CRT and the bomb would center on that pecking. Seemed impossibly Rube Golburg but it was supposed to have worked. Never was deployed in combat. They had another one where tiny incendiary charges were attached to bats. The idea was that bombers would fly over Japan with these bat bombs at the ready.
Back in the days of the opium wars, the chinese had a plan to catapult flaming monkeys onto british boats, in the hope that the panicking simians would run into the powder reserves and blow up the ship.
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The mix of robots and animals need not be so nefarious. The prime job of my roomba and my scooba is to clean up after my parrot. Instead of newspaper, there's a plastic mat beneath his cage and play area. Roomba cleans up all of the bits of food and torn matter that he drops, and then the scooba cleans up his dried messes.
Pretty undignified use of technology, of course. On the scale of "robots I'd like to be reincarnated as", they'd rank pretty near the bottom ;)
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Nah, just add an umlaut (Score:2)
Preferably over the "R"
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Google translate sez:
Color me "meh".
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On the other hand, in German it's
Nagetier-Lenkflugkörper
though that's just "Rodent" and "Guided missile" concatenated. For a missile *guided by* a rodent, it would be:
Nagetier-Geführter Flugkörper
A little more forbidding-looking and you even have an umlaut there. But it doesn't roll off the tongue.
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Much, much better.
that won't work (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:that won't work (Score:4, Interesting)
Paths? Do hamsters even follow paths with a ball? Has anyone proven that they don't just run to ESCAPE the ball, with no thought about what's outside the ball except "freedom"?
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My wife's hamster certainly seems to. Every time we put her in her ball, she ends up in a limited number of places.
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Has anyone proven that they don't just run to ESCAPE the ball, with no thought about what's outside the ball except "freedom"?
I don't know about "proven", but watch a hamster in a hamster ball some time. Sure at first they're probably just trying to get out of the ball and randomly bumping into things. But at some point it becomes pretty obvious that they're trying to get to specific places by running in the ball, which obviously takes a different kind of coordination to do than running on the floor, so t
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We even step on exactly the same spot as the person in front of us when walking single file.
Maybe you do, but when I'm walking single file, I don't tend to look down to know where someone is stepping. Then again, I'm 6'7", and I tend to kick people's heels all the time :P.
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You'll never get an even cleaning.
You're assuming that this is about driving a vacuum cleaner. There's other things iRobot does such as their communications [irobot.com] product.
Then there's just, you know, the hack. Neat things are done to honor the hack. Realizing that there might be a practical use for the hack comes later.
Re:that won't work (Score:5, Funny)
Just put a tazer in it to randomly shock the rodent, that way he doesnt think any path is safe. Problem solved :-)
Well that one at least. You'll need some of iRobot's more serious military projects to handle the PETA onslaught after you add the taser.
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works great until... (Score:2)
...the hamster is sucked up by the vacuum.
PETA's gonna have a field day with this one.
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No, they won't (Score:2)
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Nope, you don't put hamsters into bongs.
You put cats into bongs.
No, I'm not making this up. [omaha.com]
The video in You Tube (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doQvWsJRCPs [youtube.com]
Looks like a step backwards to me (Score:2)
All they've done is replace their highly advanced "running in spirals" AI brain with a rather large trackball.....
What's happening at iRobot, anyway? Nothing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Years ago, they came out with a device that was good for its time. It was a dust-buster doing a random walk.
Now they're on their 5th generation model. And it's a slightly better dust-buster which does a random walk. But it talks.
Were there some smart people there at first and they all left?
Why have they produced so little in all this time?
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Probably because a random walk is a local optimum, and all the other optima are a LONG way away.
I want one that picks up dropped coins and pens and other solid debris and separates it from the dust and fluff. Bonus if it can count my change.
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I know what you're saying, but I just don't see it. They've had years to work on finding their way home to their power supply and still don't reliably do it.
As for coins, you know, if the darn thing knew where it was, it could tell you it passed over a bump on a map of crap to pick up. I realize that that's manual, but it's would be nice to know that there's a new object under the couch when you're looking for your keys.
I know it's all about price. But wouldn't it make sense for a company that built its
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Years ago, they came out with a device that was good for its time. It was a dust-buster doing a random walk.
Now they're on their 5th generation model. And it's a slightly better dust-buster which does a random walk. But it talks.
Were there some smart people there at first and they all left?
Why have they produced so little in all this time?
They make a Scooba that "mops" your floor, a model that cleans your pool (2nd generation), a Looj model that cleans gutters, along with their stuff they make for military. I'd say they still have some smart people there.
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I've played around quite a bit with the Roomba vacuums, and IMHO, the 5th. generation is about the first model that really works well enough to justify using it as a primary vacuum for the house -- and even then, don't count on long-term reliability or "hassle free cleaning".
Until the current generation, they didn't really perfect the concept of the spinning bristle brush that sticks out from the Roomba's frame far enough to push debris out from edges of walls and into the path of its main brushes, so it co
Re: gutter cleaner bot (Score:2)
I realize it's been around a while, but their CEO still showed it at CES as the "latest product" of theirs. I think the real issue is, it wasn't marketed too well. I remember seeing it years ago in a Popular Science "What's New" feature, but never ran across a single one sold in a local store after that, and forgot all about it.
I don't know if they have a consumer product any newer than it to hawk. (Everything else is just another Roomba revision or Scooba floor cleaner revision, and both of those have b
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No. They're overpriced. The older nanos did everything one would want, until you decide you want a radio or a mike or have it play ogg files.
Why make that assumption?
Floor cleaning robots don't work, unless you're a lucky person without furniture that confuses them. iPod's do work. They get you to buy new pieces of plastic. But the first needs improvement and the second doesn't.
I smell copyright infringement (Score:3, Funny)
Looks like a clear case of prior art:
http://www.xkcd.com/413/ [xkcd.com]
Hilarious! (Score:2)
This is the dumbest idea I've heard all week. Vacuum cleaners are there to make cleaning easier, robotic vacuum cleaners are there to make it even easier than old fashioned ones. So why would anyone want a vacuum cleaner that you had to feed, water, and clean up its shit after?
Ideally, a robot should need absolutely no care at all.
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I can see wanting to build one. It might be fun to hack, too.
Is it really powered? (Score:2)
What's going on here? (Score:4, Insightful)
And for my next feat... (Score:2)
3.2.1.Penguins! (Score:2)
What about Baron Von Cavitus? He's a hamster-guided robot too!
Make it remote (Score:2)
The next logical step is to remote the hamster ball interface, so the hamster in one room is driving the Roomba in the next room. A 360 camera on the Roomba and a full surround projection around the stationary ball would do nicely.
This could be a boon for stay-at-home hamsters. Instead of wandering the same living room day in and day out, their thoughtful owners could plop the hamster in their own personal CircleVision 360 with the remote Roomba wandering in any number of living rooms across the world.
Davros? (Score:2, Funny)
Here's the Beta Version (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTxW3GWZ5hI [youtube.com]
They need to work on the restraint systems, but other than that it looks like it's working great!
Verges on pet abuse (Score:2)
The ball (shown in the video) is too small for that ham - see how much she has to arch her back? Also, you really don't want to leave a ham in her ball for more than ten minutes or so at a pop to avoid overheating and dehydration.
Lastly, that poor ham and all that noise! My wifes ham dives for cover anytime we start anything that makes a loud and/or high pitched noise. I'd never put Her Imperial Fuzziness through all that.
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Sure it's perpetual.. until you forget to feed your vacum cleaner for a few weeks.
Poor Boo :'(
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Far better just to upholster your entire apartment in fur and let the cat lick it clean.