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That still doesn't make the USR references in the film any less of a product placement. This press release proves it. Even the film's title is an ad for the Roomba vacuum cleaner and other fine products.

Maybe they should invest in some cleaners...

I'm still waiting for my robot maid, holiday on the moon and flying car.

Flying cars are already here, you can't spend a holiday on the moon (yet), but this guy got the next best thing, and there aren't any fully fledged robotic maids out there yet, so you'll have to do with this sucker.

The 21st century has only just begun.

The tech isn't there yet. There is something similar to this idea, it's a supposed "smart" floorvac called the Roomba which is just dumber than a pile of bricks. Not to say this is the leading technology in the field, but i'm fairly certain it's an indication as to where retail autonomics is at. Also remember the Darpa Project with autonomous ground vehicles, some of which, didn't even make it out the gate.

I hate to discourage your effort, but hey.. you get sun, you breathe fresh air not recycled by a case fan, and sweat off a few mountain dew pounds. It's a win-win situation!

How about some duct tape job of roomba and a lawn mower ? You get obstacle avoidance and area coverage for free. You can even come up with interesting names like "Rower" or "Moomba" :^)

"I don't accept that you can't design a repair bot for under that launch cost?"

I would be willing to believe it. Just the other day my $300 autonomous vacuum cleaner decided to get lost, drive off the stairs and break itself. It didn't even have to survive in space. When it comes down to it, I don't have a lot of faith in robots at the moment.

An analog motor controller is usually a closed-loop feedback control system consisting or resistors, capacitors, inductors, and amplifying transistors. Which is not really the forte of ASICs. I'm not sure why you're under the impression there's an ASIC in the Robosapien -- I didn't see that anywhere, and I read every link I could find. I guess there could be, but that'd be overkill -- a simple PIC running a very simple state machine could handle this:

Using the ergonomic remote control, you can command Robosapien(TM) to perform up to 67 pre-programmed functions including pick-up, throw, high-five, whistle, dance and three different karate moves.

Robosapien(TM) is fully programmable. He can perform a programmed chain of commands in any combination of moves that you select. For example, you can create your own dance sequence or program him to walk straight, turn left and give your buddy a high five.

The cool thing about this isn't the complexity of the system, or it's ability to be as autonomous as even a Roomba, rather its lifelike motion accomplished by very fast, very cheap (but not at all flexible or extensible) analog closed-feedback loop control circuits.

Analog circuits, BTW, are much harder and more expensive to design than digital logic. Most cheap PICs and simple controllers include no such analog circuits (just A/D and/or D/A if you spend a bit more). Certainly not the highly custom and tuned ones needed here. ASICs also cost more for custom analog cores. Your ASIC vendor may give you a stock, commonly-used analog core for free (PLL, DLL, D/A, A/D, etc.) but you'll pay for custom layout, at least one test chip, and lots more per part to design your own RLC/amplfier circuit into an ASIC than just using the stock cellbase or gatearray digital logic.

And, without being even more expensive, the 1% accuracy you quote for passive component variations on cmos (the cheap) process is way low. More like 10-500%, especially for the relatively large (~kOhm, mH, and mF) R, L, and C values needed for control systems. It's easier to make really small R, L, and C's on cmos, but the accuracy is poor unless you pay a lot more than $80. Moreover, the amplifiers you need are too strong for cheap cmos processors -- why buy enough die for tens of thousands of tiny weak transisors optimized for on/off operation (which is the smallest feasible die to make these days) when you only need a few strong ones configured to amplify? Discrete would be cheaper and more precise/tunable in this case.

Is that for this Christmas or an accounting of birthday, anniversary, etc. gifts for the last two years? If the former, please stop posting as you're making me look really bad! Two watches and a tea kettle? Meanwhile, I still insist on using my rusty old kettle from my bachelor days and throw a tantrum when my wife proposes replacing it.

It's for Christmas. I keep a list on my laptop of things she says she wants throughout the year. When it comes to Christmas, I've got a great list and am never short of ideas.

I had gotten her a Roomba also, but the iRobot company kept calling and leaving messages on the answering machine about the battery charger they were sending me, so she found out about that and got it as an extra anniversary present.

Not even if it's one of those Roomba things that does it automatically?

here's one.

Roomba

I think you mean www.roombavac.com.

Good old Roomba. Saved me from back pain plenty a times... You did mean the vacuum didn't you?

So, I could spend tall coin on a couple of gussied-up RC robots, or I could lay down $250 on a top-of-the-line Roomba and pick up a Bentley Turbo R and some high-class hookers with the change. What to do, oh, what to do?

With Roomba you can always go into another room, or leave the house entirely for complete quiet while Roomba cleans. (Web FAQ) (Emphasis Mine)

This is good general advice you can use to handle any noisy problem in the home (spouse, dog, etc.), not just the Roomba.

They also added a wall mounting unit for storing it and a remote control, which lets you start it and even drive it around manually. [Product Description]

Most people don't think the remote is useful, but my kids love it, and my mother (who can't vacuum due to back problems) is now alot more satisfied with how clean the floor is, which also keeps her allergies down and gives her time to do the little remaining work like the kitchen counter.

All in all - a great product, not just for the lazy, but for the allergic and the disabled.

Adam is nowhere near a revolutionary robot. It was programmed to recharge itself. It 'learned' two facts: red walls don't recharge, green flowers do recharge. Wow. What is that, 3 lines of code within one IF loop? It moves around randomly and when it touches a wall its energy goes down. When it happens to touch a flower its energy goes up. Now that it knows that its learning is complete. It can't learn anything more. To me, a truly learning robot can learn anything if left alone long enough. Like how to speak, how to pick up a cheque at a restaurant, what the difference between red and blue is, how to get to the store and back. And it would have to learn it all from scratch like a baby would. Adam is way too specialized. He's useless. You might argue that baby steps like this will pay off in the long run but they've been building robots like this since the 1980s. It's If that's a learning robot so is my Roomba.

It's not necessary to clean the brushes every run. According to this page, they recommend doing it every ten runs. Although I think most people could go with, "As needed." Picking up a lot of long hairs? You'll probably need to clean more often. Not much hair? You can probably do it less frequently. Just clean it when a big wad of hair accumulates at the ends of the brushes.

I own a roomba, there is no self charger available. It must have been mis-labled. The charging mechanism is a two prong plug, and the roomba has no way of lining it up or plugging it in.

Check the iRobot roomba website. If there was one, I'd be the first to buy it.

Nothing. I built it from scavenged parts.

I have a suggestion - next time take that money and effort and build one of these[link to vacuum cleaner]

Don't need to. I have a Roomba.

or at least hire on of these[link to picture of a maid]

Already have one. For the sake of brain damaged children like you who obviously can't even read an entire comment, I will repeat the last line:

(please note: the mess visible in the background is the result of packing for a move and is not indicative of the normal state of my living quarters. I got enough snide comments regarding that the last time I posted this link, thank you very much.)

dumbass.

I nominate Roomba. It's arguably the first cheap and practical consumer robot, and it's definitely the first non-toy robot I've ever owned.

Roomba

It seems that some people have the notion that robots have to be "humaniod", essentially useless, and prohibitively expensive. One of the best examples of what robots in the near term will look like is the Roomba, which is a small robot designed for a specific job, and is only $200. I've got one, and it really does do a good job of vacuming the house with little intervention. I'd imagine that a home sentry robot would most likely look like a roving webcam with a WiFi interface to your home computer, rather than something with legs and a face. Now, if you're looking to get something to cook and serve you dinner...

This certainly reminds me of those retina-scanning, robotic spiders in Tom Cruise's "Minority Report."

Also check out this guy's company at iRobot which offers real life robotic product like the "Roomba" - a robotic vacuum cleaner.

I guess we may be only half a century away from commericialized robot similar to Honda's Asimo Humaniod.

It seems to be some sort of robot vacuum cleaner. Detailas at http://roombavac.com/.

I do like the name of the company manufacturing it: iRobot. I bet Asimov would get a kick out of it, were he still alive.

Now back to selling some science fiction first editions...

Lame Excuse Books: http://www.io.com/~lawrence/lame.html

...like I was, what the hell a Roomba was:

Roomba Homepage.

Bad news:
With the mention of the cell phone software being designed for DoCoMo handsets, I have a feeling this will be released for the Japan market, and much later, if ever for those of us in the US.

Good news:
Not nearly as multi-function, but arguably more useful is a robot that was just released in the US. Like the multi thousand dollar electolux sold in europe, the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner was just released by the people at iRobot, and is available now at Sharper Image and similar stores. Oh, and it's only $200. PC Magazine has a review.

Also, there's been a robot available for home monitoring and general wandering around in the US for some time called the Cye. It's brain is your PC, but with their advanced kits that include a camera, you can have it do remote monitoring, etc... too. This thing is currently about $3k, but it used to be under $1k!

Anyone have an idea of the estimated price on MARON-1?