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Robotics

Roomba Vacuum Robot Opens to Hackers 127

Posted by Zonk from the do-do-do-dooo dept.
FleaPlus writes "iRobot has quietly released the specifications (pdf) for the Roomba Serial Control Interface. Using a serial port one can now tinker with the Roomba by controlling behaviors, programming new songs, and remotely monitoring sensors. Hopefully this will allow for some clever hacks."
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Roomba Vacuum Robot Opens to Hackers More

Roomba Vacuum Robot Opens to Hackers

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  • Have to do it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chris Bradshaw ( 933608 ) * on Saturday December 17, 2005 @08:54AM (#14279154)
    Of course, this article wouldn't be complete without mentioning "Woomba"... For those who are unaware, check out the following link.

    Woomba [slashdong.org]

    I think it's safe to say that it's just a matter of time before we read a /. story of how some geek terrorized his wife/girlfriend/neighbor with one of these...

  • First Hack? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Arghdee ( 813921 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @08:57AM (#14279167)
    Add a hose, and you've got every single male geek's (slashdotter?) dream..

    Sexual gratification that comes to you!
    • Add a hose, and you've got every single male geek's (slashdotter?) dream

      An old issue of Discover magazine referred to the lacerations received by one man who tried this as "Hoover's Depression".

  • Judgement Day. (Score:5, Funny)

    by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @09:02AM (#14279174)
    By the time Roomba became self-aware it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms; everywhere. It was software; in cyberspace. There was no system core; it could not be shutdown. The attack began at 6:18 PM, just as he said it would. Judgment Day, the day the human race was almost destroyed by the vacuums they'd built to clean their homes. --John Connor.

  • But there's a terrible secret! (Score:5, Funny)

    by FhnuZoag ( 875558 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @09:03AM (#14279178)
    How long before these robots turn evil and try to push us down the stairs?

  • and then was sent back in time... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17, 2005 @09:08AM (#14279190)
    thus the roomba and not skynet became self-aware on August 8th, 1997...

    Meanwhile our carpets have never been cleaner and our pets never more terrified...

  • Home Security (Score:5, Funny)

    by BinBoy ( 164798 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @09:16AM (#14279206) Homepage
    Can't wait to read about the first dead burglar.
  • programming new songs

    Hmmmm.... I bet this bot has a wicked underarm turn.

  • switching it from suck, to blow.

    Spaceballs rules btw.
  • a case of hobbyists who manage to put the cash together for a Roomba who will do the hacks. Put a few sensors on it, a separate microcontroller, make it look like the Borg have taken it over, teach it a new trick or two... but that is about it. More or less, it will be like the people who hacked the Robosapiens etc. except that its a bit more expensive to hack into....
    • I want to see it attached to an iPaq (PocketPC) running Linux, with a GPS receiver and a detailed map of my house. Make it smart enough to get every nook and cranny, but automatically avoiding high-risk areas like the area behind my audio setup with all its cables, knowing that it should always enter/exit the area under my dresser in the middle, etc.

      Unfortunately, it looks like (thanks to our beloved DOD) GPS is about a factor of ten too inaccurate to do anything useful with it other than providing drivi

      • Anybody know of a good way to get perfectly repeatable accuracy to within... say 3-6 inches within a local area? (It doesn't have to have any bearing on actual location, so long as you can repeatably get within a couple inches of the same value at the same location every time you try.)

        It wouldn't be cheap, but it looks like the NorthStar [evolution.com] system from Evolution Robotics can do pretty accurate robot localization.
        • It wouldn't be cheap, but it looks like the NorthStar system from Evolution Robotics can do pretty accurate robot localization.

          Could it also be used by Hollywood in motion capture to eliminate the need for reflective ping-pong balls?
    • More or less, it will be like the people who hacked the Robosapiens etc. except that its a bit more expensive to hack into...

      Not to nitpick, but I think this is actually cheaper than hacking a Robosapien. A Roomba Red costs $150 [amazon.com], while one of the newer Robosapiens costs $230 [google.com].
  • Now my Roomba will be able to find Sarah O'Connor

  • They actually built these things? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 ) <tmh@nodomain.org> on Saturday December 17, 2005 @09:50AM (#14279288) Homepage
    Wow.. heard about it on slashdot last year and thought it was just a late april fools joke.

    Do they work? It seems to me that unless your house is completely square and tidy with nothing on the floor it's going to suck ..errr.. blow... err.. whatever. The average geek house is a bit of a maze of cables and other stuff as well, plus narrow corridors full of boxes etc. Not to mention the problem of closed doors (can this thing open doors or is it expecting star-trek style automatic ones?).
    • It works really well. You'll have to keep an eye on it the first few times you run it to see where the problem areas and "traps" are at. This includes properly laying some of yours cables so that they are along the edge of the wall, etc.

      But once you get things set, it's really a great gadget. I've had mine for a couple of years and I love it. I turn it on on my way to work, and I come back to a vacuumed house (even under the bed, an area I couldn't reach if I was using a regular vacuum.)

      Plus it terrifie

    • Re:They actually built these things? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @10:02AM (#14279316)
      Yes, they actually built those things.

      And they work great - be prepared to buy one for each family member that sees it in action.

      'The average geek house' ...is not exactly the 'average' target demographic. The manufacturer [irobot.com] assumes a modicum of upbringing, that includes such routine habits as flushing the toilet more than once a day, not creating fire hazards by casual cable placement and knowing the fine art of routine household management.

      Roombas really are quite well thought out - knows when to go back and recharge...dozens of sensors help it learn...maps each room after one pass, etc. Very cool to watch in action, and a real treat to come home from work to a clean floor.

      • Re:They actually built these things? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Murphy Murph ( 833008 ) <sealab.murphy@gmail.com> on Saturday December 17, 2005 @10:30AM (#14279413) Journal
        Roombas really are quite well thought out - knows when to go back and recharge...dozens of sensors help it learn...maps each room after one pass, etc. Very cool to watch in action, and a real treat to come home from work to a clean floor.


        knows when to go back and recharge

        True, if you have the charging dock (optional on the base model, comes with the more expensive models), and if Roomba can find the charging dock before it dies.

        dozens of sensors

        Stair sensor, optical wall sensor, bump sensor, dirt sensor, wheel sensorx2, battery sensor.
        7 sensors.

        help it learn

        It does not learn, it has no memory.

        maps each room after one pass

        It has no memory, it stores no internal map, it bounces around in a semi-random pattern and attempts to follow walls in a counter-clockwise direction.

        a real treat to come home from work to a clean floor

        True!
        • I'm really not trying to be a troll, but f they have no internal memory, what the Hell is the serial interface for? Reprogramming songs? Adding instructions? Those things sound like activities that require memory to me...

          But then again, I don't really know.
          • It has an algorithm for moving around and responding to sensor events; this is presumably what can be reprogrammed via the serial interface. So yes it obviously has some rewritable memory; however the GP was correct in saying that it has no mapping capability, and does not keep track of where it is or where it has been relative to a map or waypoint. At least that was the case last time I looked at the roomba.

            Actually, AFIK none of the commercial robot cleaners have any map-making capability. Anyone know o

            • Judging from my brief inspection of the SCI specifications [irobot.com], you can not get access to any of the Roomba's on-board memory or reprogram any of it's logic, but you can give it commands and read the state of the sensors-- so it should be possible to give the roomba mapping capability, provided that the logic was all external.

              Something like a gumstix device [gumstix.com] would be an ideal platform-- it has linux, it has serial, and potentially wifi / bluetooth. You could even power the thing off of the roomba battery.

        • Re:They actually built these things? (Score:5, Informative)

          by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @01:24PM (#14280080)
          ...info from the manuf. site*, and my experience with at least one of the little beasts:
          *"Roomba is an intelligent and effective vacuuming robot. All Roomba Vacuuming Robots feature iRobot's unique AWARE(TM) Robot Intelligence Systems. AWARE uses dozens of sensors to monitor Roomba's environment, and adjusts Roomba's behavior up to 67 times per second, ensuring that Roomba cleans effectively, intelligently and safely."

          Mapping:
          "Roomba automatically calculates room size and run time based on a number of factors. Roomba will clean longer in rooms with more debris and furniture. Roomba also spends a little bit longer cleaning rugs than hard floors. In an empty 8x10 room with hard floors, Roomba will clean for approximately 20 minutes. Removing obstacles from a room will decrease the amount of time Roomba needs to spend in a room."

          Sensors:
          There are multiples of many of the single ones you listed. As an example, there are at least 4 'cliff' sensors, and 2 'Dirt Detect' sensors. That alone = 6, not 2.

          'It does not learn, it has no memory'
          Cleaning Intelligence:
          "Roomba automatically calculates how long it needs to work to clean the entire room." (calcs such as these, along with any cleaning schedules, have to be retained somehow, even if it is session based only...)

          '...bounces around in a semi-random pattern'
          (...semi-random? semi? random pattern?)
          How does Roomba know where to go?
          "Because it uses specially designed cleaning behaviours to decide. Roomba will switch between spiralling to cover open floor spaces, and wall following to clean edges and criss crossing the room. All the while it will use its non-marking bumper to feel for furniture and obstacles and move around them."

          All of which reminds me to contact them about correcting some of the grammar in their documentation.
          • Software has not thrown off the yoke of determinism yet...although hardware certainly has.

          • You're buying into Roomba's marketting hype. Fundamentally the Roomba is a really simple design. They made the right decision, most people tried to make really smart vacuums. The result was complex and expensive. Roomba's brilliant insight was that a pretty stupid machine could be Good Enough.

            Most people would suggest that "learning" and "memory" mean things like it remembers how big a room is between cleaning sessions, or that as you clean the same room repeatedly the Roomba will deduce more effectic

            • To prevent the Roomba from vacuuming a spot too many times, the manufacturers could just add a sensor in the vacuum inlet that checks how much dust is being sucked up. I've seen this feature on some vacuum cleaners: there's a red light if the vacuum cleaner is sucking a lot of dust up (the area has not been cleaned yet) and a green light for if the area is already clean. So this could be implemented in the Roomba software by making it enter "spot" cleaning mode on soiled areas and just pass through areas wi
        • True, if you have the charging dock (optional on the base model, comes with the more expensive models), and if Roomba can find the charging dock before it dies.

          Bad design. Not only could it die before it gets back, it will also waste power traversing part of the room it has already cleaned.

          It should be like in-air refueling of fighter planes or calling AAA. It should send a signal to the recharger which is itself mobile. The charger homes in on the Roomba, charges the Roomba from its on-board battery, th
          • It doesn't wander randomly, it attempts to follow walls to surround the room until it locks in. It's simple, but effective.

            The roomba doesn't wait until it's down to it's last few minutes of charge, it has more then enough time to circle rooms within it's specifications at least a couple times looking.
      • Couldn't find the roomba on sale here but found the trilobyte mentioned elsewhere.

        £990.. around $1500!!!

        For that money it's cheaper to hire a cleaner. They'd do a better job too.
        • Amazon lists a half dozen Roomba models from $150 to $250, about the same price as decent traditional vacuum cleaners. I'm sure you can find expensive $1500 canister vacs as well, but most people buy the normal range, and that's where Roomba is priced.

          --
          Evan

      • The only guy I know with one of these gave up on it. In his small, clutterd bachaelor pad, it didn't have enough suction, didn't get enough places, and got stuck. He ended up buying a Dyson vac and leaving roomba in the closet.
        • The roomba definitely doesn't outperform a Dyson by traditional measurements, but try turning on a Dyson, then walk away for an hour and see how much of the room it has cleaned. They're very different devices.

          I've been using my roomba in my home office and basement, just to keep the dust bunnies down. Its also great for collecting stray Air-Soft rounds that ricochet around the room (I just need to come up with a good way to separate the BBs from the dust once they're in the bin). Both rooms have hard flo

    • Re:They actually built these things? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Paul Carver ( 4555 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @10:13AM (#14279347)
      I've got one and you're sort of right. Square is not particularly important, its search pattern does get into all the areas of a room.

      Cables are a big problem. Not just computer cables, if you have floor lamps or anything else where a power cord runs long the base of a wall Roomba will get caught on it and pull the cord away from the wall.

      Rugs are also a big problem. Wall to wall carpeting is fine and solid floors are fine, but Roomba can't climb from my hardwood floor onto the area rug in my living room. Even if I start it on the rug, it immediately drives off the rug and spends the rest of the cycle cleaning the perimeter around the outside of the rug without being able to get back on.

      Cats are a big problem. Not with Roomba, just in general. Cat claws carpet, loosens a thread, Roomba sees loose thread and sucks it up, unravelling carpet and jamming Roomba's roller brush.

      Steps are a problem. Roomba has drop sensors but the don't always work. I've repeatedly found my Roomba upside down after flipping off a single step down. I wouldn't trust Roomba to clean the area adjacent to the top of a staircase.

      Beds are a problem. If you have a bed skirt or sheets or blankets that dangle down to the floor, Roomba will get caught in them.

      Chairs are a problem. I have several chairs just the right size for Roomba to get wedged into the space between the legs. You wouldn't beleive how persistent Roomba is about wedging itself in tight.

      Other than that it works great. The cleaning suction is strong and the rotating brush works well. It picks up a lot of dirt and dust.

      Basically Roomba is like a baby. You have to baby proof a house when you have a baby and you have to Roomba proof a house if you want to have a Roomba.

      • Hi,

        I bought a roomba scheduler about 2 weeks ago, and I have to fully agree with your assessment. Yet, after "baby proofing" my house the roomba works great. In addition, a baby proof house usually means your house is just cleaner. My house is not sloppy any more. No chords hanging out, no clothing on the floor etc.

        I have stairs throughout the house and mine has not flipped over there stairs yet, it works perfectly.

        It cleans my entire 1200 sq ft first floor (high traffic area) just about every day. It

      • Chairs... (Score:3, Funny)

        by antdude ( 79039 )
        "Chairs are a problem. I have several chairs just the right size for Roomba to get wedged into the space between the legs. You wouldn't beleive how persistent Roomba is about wedging itself in tight."

        I have a solution for that. Invite Steve Ballmer [microsoft.com] over and piss him off! [grin]
        • This man deserves a funny mod.


          Of course you could also apply quantom mechanics and NOT check whether your Roomba is stuck or not. That way it will either be stuck and not be stuck until you check on it!

          • At work the other day, the bad-joke-of-the-day was similar.

            In lots of hotels, motel, inn, etc there are signs that indicate someone famous slept there. "Elvis slept here." "King Charles II slept here."

            In a small inn in Germany there is a similar sign. "Heisenberg may have slept here."

            It served as a very good geek test. People either immediately laughed, or just looked blankly waiting for the punchline.
        • I have a solution for that. Invite Steve Ballmer over and piss him off! [grin]
          does that mean we should call him Chairba?
      • Hallways are a problem too. Roomba has great difficulty with my hallway. If every room in the hallway is open and roomba cleans the whole area, it can hit about 95% of the hallway without setting it down special for a spot clean. If the rooms are mostly closed, roomba will not enter the hallway at new angles and therefore will not hit a good percentage of the hallway. It actually repeats over the same areas.

        I haven't had problems with chairs, but now instead of cleaning the floor every week and moving ar
    • We've had ours for over a year and love it. Yeah this is practically a testimonial. We try to keep our geek house pretty clean. We have three kids, a dog and a cat. We vacuum often and the house is generally picked up.

      I won't repeat the other comments about roomba getting stuck under chairs (yes, it's annoying) and clogging on rug tassles (yup). The thing I want to add is that even after I vacuum the whole house, if I set roomba free for an hour it will ALWAYS amaze me at how much more stuff it picks
    • There seems to be at least one clone [govacuum.com] of the Roomba, the Cleanmate 365 QQ-1 [factorydirect.ca]. Has anyone checked to see if these cheaper clones are at all compatable/comparable with the Roomba for hackitivity? Update: Some people are looking into it. [roombareview.com]
    • I've never had problems, unless I had a cord unattached to something... Like my cell phone charger. THe other cords get temporarily caught by the Roomba but the weight on the end of them (my laptop for example) keeps them from being wound up in the brushes. After a moment or to the Roomba seems to jerk free.
    • Yes, and they are quite popular with the mainstream consumer market. There are some other technological advances that you might have heard of -- TiVo, WiFi and HDTV. Homes that have those kinds of things tend to have Roombas... and they are hardly "geek houses". They are just ordinary family homes.

      --
      Evan "Damn, sometimes Slashdot makes me feel old"

    • Yeah they work, kind of. A guy at work buys every new gadget that comes out, so he brought his in and we played with it. Did a good job, but was kind of loud. The one I find pretty cool, he bought this one too, is a robotic lawn mower, it looks like a giant yellow Roomba. Out here in California the grass doesn't grow too fast so it handles it pretty well.

      For my house the regular Roomba won't cut the mustard. If they were to combine the floor cleaner with the lawn mower along with a combat/bomb robot

  • Make it respond to 2 verbal commands, like (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17, 2005 @10:14AM (#14279353)
    'Stop'

    and

    'Do you have to do this NOW; I am trying to have a conversation here.'
  • The article's mention of the creation of the bong caddy Roomba reminded me of Dennis Leary's bit about how the problem with smoking dope is that it leads to carpentry. The bong caddy Roomba, that is too rich.

  • Clever hacks, eh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by TallMatthew ( 919136 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @10:15AM (#14279359)
    Creative wags have already turned a Roomba into an automatic bong caddy.

    Mr. President, what does this mean for the war on drugs? Do you have an eye on these intelligent, morally-deficient vacuum cleaners?

    The president said Friday he could not talk about the matter.

    "We do not discuss ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country, and the reason why is that there's an enemy that lurks, that would like to know exactly what we're trying to do to stop them," Bush said in a television interview.

  • Wait a sec (Score:2, Informative)

    by rolypolyman ( 933130 )
    Come on... any real hacker wouldn't need to be spoon-fed the specifications! If they have that, then they're just programming.

  • Stupid Roomba (Score:2, Informative)

    by Rumagent ( 86695 )
    I really want to like the Roomba. It is a cool, affordable and self destructs about once a month. After going through five Roombas, I finally gave up and bought a Trilobite instead. The Roomba is potentially nice, but the crap quality means that it is little more than a nifty toy.
    • Well, if you don't have any use for the self-destructed Roombas, I could probably find something fun to do with them... How much do you think shipping to 46383 would cost? (Whatever the cheapest method is, of course. Usually USPS, but I suppose it could be UPS.)
      My email = (my username)(at)yahoo(dot)com
    • I really want to like the Roomba. It is a cool, affordable and self destructs about once a month. After going through five Roombas, I finally gave up and bought a Trilobite instead. The Roomba is potentially nice, but the crap quality means that it is little more than a nifty toy.

      Cripes, what did you DO to them? I've had the same roomba for like three years and it has survived falls down stairs, getting piched under a rocking chair, and numerous random abuses from dogs and children. They're not built like

      • Re:Stupid Roomba (Score:3, Informative)

        by Rumagent ( 86695 )
        Standard use on hardwood floors. And I do not have children or dogs for that matter. What model do you own? I purchased the Discovery SE and I am certainly not the only one experiencing this - a quick search on roombareview can confirm this.

        So yeah, I still think they are crap.

        • Re:Stupid Roomba (Score:3, Informative)

          by Dun Malg ( 230075 )
          Standard use on hardwood floors. And I do not have children or dogs for that matter. What model do you own? I purchased the Discovery SE and I am certainly not the only one experiencing this - a quick search on roombareview can confirm this.

          Hmmmm....I have an "original Roomba" from when there was only one model, and I recently picked up a Discovery SE. Searching the Roombareview.com forum I find a few people complaining of bad sucker motors and erratic behavior with the Discovery, but the biggest complain

    • Yet another more serious solution is Friendly Robotics product [friendlyrobotics.com]. I have a robomower by them which works great. Though the price tag on the vac is steep (but not far from the Tribobite).

  • What are you guys crazy?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anita Coney ( 648748 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @10:44AM (#14279467) Homepage
    You WANT hacked robots running around your house?! Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and the kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.
  • How about several Roombas playing musical accompaniment to Drunk animatronic Walmart Santa? [hackaday.com]
  • How long before some doofus tries to reenact Great Moments in Cinema [achewood.com]?
  • William Smythe says "Leave my little buddy Scruffy [uncoveror.com] alone, you dirty hackers!"
  • I have had my Roomba discovery for about 9 months, nether noticed that small flap, just lifted it about a minute ago after reading the pdf file, and hay-presto there is a small din connector there. Now I just need to think of something to do with it.......
    • Now I'm just curious... You say you looked under the "flap" on your roomba and looked at it's "din connector". So tell us, is it male or female?
    • I'd like to see a bluetooth/wifi dongle that plugs into it. My central server already does the other home automation stuff, even if I could just schedule vaccuuming once a day with the wireless, would be a help.

      But what I really want, is to be able to get a location to within 6" or so. This would allow you to write a quick program that steers it from room to room. Or guards against it going places it shouldn't.

      (Not to mention you could have it do "dirt maps" via the dirt sensor, wonder if I really want to k

  • iRobot is Looking for More Geeks (Score:5, Informative)

    by sonpal ( 527593 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @03:12PM (#14280468) Homepage
    If you enjoy working on robots or being around robots, we have several openings listed on our careers web page [irobot.com]. You don't have to be an engineer - it takes a lot of different types to operate any real company.

    In addition to the open positions, we generally have room for interns, especially if you are a hands-on type.

    All of our openings for both the Consumer and Government divisions are in our Burlington, MA headquarters located about 20 minutes from downtown Boston. The Government division also has a small facility in San Luis Obispo, CA about 4 hours from LA, where we make rare hires when we find the right people.

    Drop me a note at "hsonpal at our domain name" when you apply - I'll let HR know that I'm referring you.

    -- Hiten

    • Drop me a note at "hsonpal at our domain name" when you apply - I'll let HR know that I'm referring you.

      Heh. That just tickled me for some reason.

      HR: Hey, we have this resume, who is this guy?
      You: Some dude from Slashdot. I don't know anything about him, but hey, he's on Slashdot!

      Honestly though, thanks for the tip (too bad MA is just about the last place I wanna live, personally). If you have HR people that would seriously take a Slashdot recommendation, it must be a pretty cool place to work.

  • Roomball (Score:5, Funny)

    by tektrix ( 678830 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @03:25PM (#14280509)
    A friend just gave me her old Roomba to hack, so this is great timing! I'm going to use it to realize an idea (dunno if it's original or not) wherein the hacked Roomba lets me turn any room into a gigantic pinball machine. It'll have more bump sensors, a frantic motion algo, a crap-load of blinky lights and sound-effects, plus a digital display (in big red numbers) that keeps score. You set it down, aim it into the room, and let it go. A timer stops it after X minutes. High score wins (or whatever). I'm gunna call it "Roomball" . . . or maybe "Pinba". My cat will never forgive me.

  • Well.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Galston ( 895804 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @03:42PM (#14280573)
    I for one welcome our new....
  • you know what would be funny? if big roomba could deploy little roombas :D add a docking bay, add some small bots with some memory that they get from 'dad' and hack on!

  • they actually have one at my base (Score:3, Interesting)

    by spacerodent ( 790183 ) on Saturday December 17, 2005 @08:33PM (#14282026)
    I work for the Navy and they have one of these in a meeting room. They just let the little bastard run around free range 24/7 and the room is packed with chairs. There is a strict no touchy rule in effect as well so people will just deliberatly put their foot rigth in front of it only to watch the poor roobra bounce off. As if that wasn't funny enough try listening to a speech from someone important as a tiny robot putters around smacking into things. Highly amusing.
  • programming new songs

    I think I would slap a disney sticker of Dopey [tiscali.co.uk] on the top and program it to do "Whistle While You Work".

  • That's so cool! I'll just openly cheerlead... It is not the most popular language, so it is worth pointing out when it shows up somewhere unexpected.

  • .... a Beowulf cluster of these.
  • I welcome our new robotic carpet-sweeping overlords!

  • You gotta give that movie credit - Gene Simmons was fabulous as the evil Dr. Charles Luthor! And (besides Kirsty Alley) the other babe was hot, too.

  • SCI limitations (Score:3, Informative)

    by Blob Pet ( 86206 ) on Sunday December 18, 2005 @01:24AM (#14283130) Homepage
    I was playing around with the SCI before it was officially released, and here are a few of problems I've had with it:

    1) You can send the Roomba direct commands for driving, controlling cleaning motors, and polling internal and external sensors, but you can't reprogram it. If you want to add any real intelligence, you're going to have to mount a small computer or PIC on top of the Roomba or keep it tethered to a desktop.

    2) You can't control the left and right drive wheels with independent power values. Instead, they've provided a higher-level system where you have to specify a value for foward/reverse velocity and a value for turning radius in either clockwise or counter-clockwise direction.

    3) The serial port is a not-so-common 7-pin mini-DIN connector, so you're probably going to be splicing your own mini-DIN-to-DB9 cables. Also, the Roomba's serial interface communicates at plus and minus 5 volts, while PCs talk at plus and minus 10 volts. This means that if you're going to use a PC to control the Roomba, you're going to use a MAX232 chip.

  • It will need a few first things to make it decent (Score:3, Informative)

    by EMIce ( 30092 ) on Sunday December 18, 2005 @03:21AM (#14283540) Homepage
    This thing won't be a viable robotics platform until extra inputs and outputs added. Not to mention it has to stay tethered to a PC. This is screaming for a circuit board with a $10 microcontroller on it, one that can provide for analog/digital inputs & outputs, as well as some program space so it doesn't have to be tethered. One of those gumstix computers would work, but I'd prefer something cheaper, though gumstix does wireless, and that could be handy.

    Another problem is that applications are limited due to roomba's form factor. It might be fun equip it with a camera and a wireless gumstix module, and then have a server do processing/control - oh for, you know, things every geek ought to have, like a personal sentry or a reconnaissance drone. I bet it could make its way pretty stealthily through the floor of an office building, if the low profile were maintained, and so that it only moved when no one was looking. Neat, but I just don't see it physically actuating to do any task besides vacuuming and pushing on objects.

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