|
|
Roomba Robotic Vacuum Attracts ModdersDATE: 21-JUN-2006 PITTSBURGH—The iRobot, the iPod -- what's the difference?
The creator of the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner showed up at the Robo Business show here not only with its usual cadre of Packbots, Roombas and the relatively new Scooba robot floor mop, but also the beginnings of a third-party development community. After quietly announcing the iRobot Roomba Open interface earlier this year (and talking publicly about it for the first time at Robo Business) a cottage industry of Roomba hackers and accessories has emerged, not the least of which has been the entertaining "Frogger" robot in which a Roomba was reprogrammed to accept navigation commands and play "Frogger" with live traffic. The results were predictable. Roomba's have always shipped with a serial interface that would allow them to accept iRobot-sanctioned upgrades, but now all Roomba Discoveries produced since October can accept third-party programming. Companies are lining up to make Roombas do new, entertaining and sometimes useful things.  First MS Word, now MS Robot? Click here to read about how Microsoft's rivals are skeptical about the software giant's new robotics development kit.Robo Dynamics, a company that's spent years developing a "MILO" personal assistant robot," is now rolling out a series of Roomba interfaces with names like Roo232, to let Roomba work with Mini ITX boards; RooBasic, to add more sensors to Roomba; RooStick, to allow Roomba to connect to laptops that don't have legacy serial ports; and RooTooth, which gives Roomba wireless Bluetooth capabilities. The accessories can be purchased, bundled with Roombas at, the company's Web site, where the control software can also be purchased. Another company, Elements Products, Inc., has created a serial interface, complete with a built in microcontroller, which is about the size of a fingertip. Using the open-source WinAVR programming environment, Roomba owners can program in C and C++ (and use existing boilerplate routines to edit and build new code), compile the code and off-load through a USB/Serial interface to the small microcontroller for the price of $79.95. The controller is then plugged into to the Roomba, where it auto-boots, adding some new tricks to its repertoire.Those with older Roombas aren't out of luck, however. They can buy an OSMO module from iRobot that will upgrade Roombas purchased before October 2005. Military robo might While the cyborg soldier may be decades away, there were clear indications at Robo Business that robotics will be a part of the present and future of military missions and combat. During a keynote presentation titled "Unmanned Systems in Future Combat," Charles Cartwright, program manager for Future Combat Systems, explained that robots' first foray into combat environments was intended to be an experiment. But when iRobot's first eight Packbots went out to the field, the military wouldn't give them back. iRobot co-founder and chairman Helen Greiner later recalled that ground troops originally said that they didn't need robots. Then they got to the caves in Afghanistan where they didn't know if friend or foe was inside; if there were unexploded munitions or not. "We call it the edge-of-the-cave epiphany," Greiner said. Robots will play a critical role in military exercises going forward, Cartwright said, because they can help answer the question: "How do I know the unknown, before I go into the unknown?" Now, he said, the new questions include issues of how does the military send something down the street before the soldier, how to use it to keep a building safe once it's cleared, and how to allow a robot to share the information it gathers.
|
|
| Looking to grow IT's role in business? Looking to equip IT with the tools to make a difference? The time has come to for solution providers to increase the importance of IT. Opinion: Margins will drop quickly on managed services, and VARs need to stay two steps ahead to keep up. |
|
|
