Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the more-fun-than-vacuuming dept.
WannaGeek writes "Jake Luck and John Ioannidis have dissected a Roomba for your educational pleasure. Just the basics, but important information on how to kill a Roomba if you get trapped in a sci-fi horror flick with one threatening to suck up your breakfast."
Bad /.ing
by
core+plexus
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Here's the first page, anyway:
Roomba Internals : Nosce Your Bot : 2003-01-10
by
Jake Luck & John Ioannidis
Internal Components
With the top cover removed, we now have access to the main motherboard and various sensors and control cables.
Here is a closer look of the internal components. Note the
interesting 4 pin port (labled in green) that was not used.
Perhaps it is a diagnostic/programming interface?
To hot wire the robot to start without the top panel controls, we examined its interface circuitry. [That's all I got]
These things look cool, I've never heard of them before though.. maybe they haven't made it to the midwest yet. I can't imagine they are too horribly complex, having played with lego robots and some of the java and basic stamp kits, I'd imagine it'd take a run of the mill cs or engineering student less than a week to get the basics designed for this and maybe a little longer to get it to the level of the commercial product.
12 year olds rejoice
by
pummer
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
how long will it be until some brainy kid takes the robotics out of this, hooks it up with an electric lawn mower, and DOMINATES the lawn-mowing business in his neighborhood? Wait, that's a good idea
*runs off to get roomba*
Minesweepers
by
joelparker
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually the heuristics come from much larger and more complex robots, built for the U.S. military as minesweepers (link to review). That's why the Roomba cleans in widening circles, rather than making a internal map of the room or tracing the walls.
Not sure about this gadget
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
We saw one at Brookstone. It was repeatedly vacuuming a tabletop, stopping each time it hit the edge, backing off, doing a 1/8 turn, then going forward again. My wife wanted one. She changed her mind when we looked more closely at the wooden tabletop and saw the scratch marks from the wheels. Not what we want on our wood floors.
Also, what happens if you have a room with a coffee table or something in the center, won't there be some "shadow" areas that it won't cover? So you'd have to keep an eye on it to decide when it's repeating itself, and know where to put it to get the missed areas.
Neat idea but it's got a ways to go before it's more than a curiosity.
Re:Not sure about this gadget
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
>Neat idea but it's got a ways to go before it's more than a curiosity.
I know, let's make comments about how it performs based on how we *think* it might perform.
I don't have wood floors, so I can't comment about scratching (though looking at what contacts the floor, it seems unlikely), but the Roomba is definitely way more than a curiosity.
The key is that it's *not* 100% perfect and efficient, but it turns out that it *doesn't need to be*. Let it run around for a long time, and it does a surprisingly good job of getting the vast majority of dust and dirt. Sure, it can miss small areas next to topologically interesting structures, but these are the same kind of areas you'd have to get separately with the sucking vaccuum attachment.
That said, I'd love to see one with a larger dust bin.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Roomba Internals : Nosce Your Bot : 2003-01-10 by Jake Luck & John Ioannidis Internal Components
With the top cover removed, we now have access to the main motherboard and various sensors and control cables.
Here is a closer look of the internal components. Note the interesting 4 pin port (labled in green) that was not used. Perhaps it is a diagnostic/programming interface?
To hot wire the robot to start without the top panel controls, we examined its interface circuitry. [That's all I got]
Man Gets 70mpg in Homemade Car-Made from a Mainframe Computer
These things look cool, I've never heard of them before though.. maybe they haven't made it to the midwest yet. I can't imagine they are too horribly complex, having played with lego robots and some of the java and basic stamp kits, I'd imagine it'd take a run of the mill cs or engineering student less than a week to get the basics designed for this and maybe a little longer to get it to the level of the commercial product.
how long will it be until some brainy kid takes the robotics out of this, hooks it up with an electric lawn mower, and DOMINATES the lawn-mowing business in his neighborhood? Wait, that's a good idea
*runs off to get roomba*
Actually the heuristics come from much larger and more complex robots, built for the U.S. military as minesweepers (link to review). That's why the Roomba cleans in widening circles, rather than making a internal map of the room or tracing the walls.
We saw one at Brookstone. It was repeatedly vacuuming a tabletop, stopping each time it hit the edge, backing off, doing a 1/8 turn, then going forward again. My wife wanted one. She changed her mind when we looked more closely at the wooden tabletop and saw the scratch marks from the wheels. Not what we want on our wood floors.
Also, what happens if you have a room with a coffee table or something in the center, won't there be some "shadow" areas that it won't cover? So you'd have to keep an eye on it to decide when it's repeating itself, and know where to put it to get the missed areas.
Neat idea but it's got a ways to go before it's more than a curiosity.