| FatsDomino |
Jun 14, 2006 10:09 AM |
Roomba Shenanigans - Vacuum Robot Hacking Adventures!
Hey guys I'm sure you guys have heard of the Roomba before. That small vacuum robot. Yeah that thing.
Well I was flipping through Technology Review and I saw kind of crazy stuff people were doing with this thing. Apparantly it's an amatuer robot fanatics dream come true. People are adding bluetooth and wifi and cameras and all kinds of fun stuff to it. Some people are even using it as a remote control tank to recreate games like Frogger and Pac-Man. How cool is that?
Anyway, here's a cool snippet of the article:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Technology Review May/June 2006 pg 33
How It's Been Hacked
The Roomba's low price and SCI port have made it a tempting entry-level platform for robotics experiments. Sites such as roombareview.com and roomba.pbwiki.com have sprung up, where enthusiasts can trade tips on hacks such as cobbling together Bluetooth or Wi-Fi remote controls out of spare parts. One Bluetooth-enabled Roomba was given a green fabric pelt and was used in a real-life Frogger game at the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX, this year ( www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/03/realfrogger_tec.html), and ThingM's Tod E. Kurt is collaborating on a live-action Pac-Man re-creation, with reprogrammed Roombas dressed up as Pac-Man and ghosts, navigating a maze and vacuuming up tissue paper dots. RoombaNet ( people.csail.mit.edu/bpadams/roomba), created as part of a PhD thesis, is a tiny computer that rides on the robot and can be used to control it wirelessly. And if you want to see a Roomba in action www.vacuumcleanerlive.com has hooked a spycam to a Roomba for a first-person (first-robot?) streaming video.
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All and all I think this kicks ass. What do you guys think? =D |
