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."
-- Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
Re:In case you were wondering...
by
Rojo^
·
· Score: 4, Funny
The cool part about the Roombas is, once you have dissected it and put it back together, you have a handy vacuum cleaner to pick up all the left over screws. ..
"Honey, I don't think you were supposed to have all that left over."
"Nonsense! The company included those for demonstration. Watch."
*clack clack clack fzzzt!*
Umm, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to bookmark the Roomba anatomy site.
-- <:
Answering the Question: What's a Roomba
by
Nova+Express
·
· Score: 3, Informative
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...
I, for one, am interested in finding out if it can be changed from suck to blow.
=)
-- <:
Isn't this old news?
by
Arcaeris
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"important information on how to kill a Roomba"
I thought we already acquired this vital information circa 1985? You just jump in the air and stomp on it. Or spit fireballs. Or get a starm... ohhhh Roomba.
Thankfully we are already safe from the Bug-Bladdered Beast of Trall. Simply, close your eyes. Since, it thinks that if you can't see it, it can't see you.
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.
I'll remember that, next time that happens. Though, if it's a typical sci-fi/horror flick, my breakfast would be trying to eat me anyway.
The best way to kill one, though, would be to make a little trail of dirt that it follows around a corner, where you are waiting with a sledgehammer....
-- ...
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]
A hammer...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Funny
...probably works even better.
deedeedee de dee DEE!
by
NanoGator
·
· Score: 2, Funny
"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."
Pff, I didn't even bother reading the article. Everybody knows that to kill a Roomba you have to eat a mushroom, grow really big, then jump on it.
The roomba itself is a fine idea, but I think in my case, it would have to be accompanied with a larger model that is able to clear away the pop cans, pizza boxes, coffee cups and odd lost household pet -- petrol powered I would expect.
Roomba Name sounds kind of familiar...
by
euxneks
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"I choose YOU Roomba-bot!"
Yuck. I feel dirty for the association.
-- in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
ALTERNATE/MIRROR LOCATION
by
wlnjr
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The other location of the same material:
http://www.tla.org/roomba
Roomba experience
by
DeathB
·
· Score: 5, Informative
We have (or maybe I should say had) a Roomba in our house. I believe it was a beta model. It did a much better job than any of us expected making it around college student rooms, around in a bathroom, and even our porch. The only real complaint we had with its operations was the small size of it's container for storing whatever it vacumed.
It had quite a few nifty features. The led on it slowly changed from green, to yellow, to red as the battery drained. It'd be nice to see that on a notebook computer! Being a house full of computer science majors, quite a bit of time was spent figuring out what its algorithm was for room coverage. While we didn't get it all quite worked out, it seemed to hit all of the room.
Unfortunatly, it met a fairly quick end. After about two days, we found it running in a circle. Opening it up, we discovered that one of the wheel motors had actually siezed. We still haven't been able to find the appropriate motor on mouser or digikey. It doesn't matter too much as the final version should be on its way to us soon enough.
-- Would you do it for some scoobie crack?
ALTERNATE/MIRROR LOCATION with proper HTML
by
wlnjr
·
· Score: 2, Informative
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*
Re:12 year olds rejoice
by
Cyclometh
·
· Score: 3, Funny
That's a great idea. Take a device that, if it malfunctions, simply fails to clean your floor. Convert it to a device, that if it fails, probably kills a pet, converts your hedges to mulch, or takes out the local playground.
One of the inventors is from the MIT AI Lab. Check out Rodney Brooks for his ideas on heuristic AI and projects like humanoid robots Cog and Kismet.
His ideas, as I understand them, are to build increasingly complex robots using subsumption architecture, i.e. simple behaviors like movement come first, then more complex behaviors are added in layers. His approach to AI is radically different approach than traditional symbolic processing AI.
His research raises all kinds of interesting questions about evolution, emergent behavior, and how to pass the Turing test.
here is a mirror: mirror here is the first page (images are linked):
Disassembly Instruction
Like Tivo, Roomba is one of those marvelous technologies that makes you wonder how you ever lived without one. We are not affiliated with iRobot; however, if you don't own one yet, we recommend you get one now. One of the most frequent questions that I get from people is, "does it really clean?". Yes, and it does with grace. We praise their engineers for their cleverness and ingenuity that shall become self evident through the following pages.
It is a good idea to clean your Roomba before you start. After some trial and error we came up with the following procedure.
1: Turn off the robot.
2: Remove the Particle Bin, Vacuum Filter Door and Battery.
3: Remove the main Brush roller mechanism.
4: Remove the following screws. image
5: Turn the robot over as one piece.
6: Slide off the top cover to reveal the control cable.
7: Disconnect the control cable from the motherboard and remove the top cover.
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.
I love my Roomba
by
Pr0sper0
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I've just finally gotten used to having a robot running around the house. While it may seem to be superfluous gadget, let me tell ya it's darn handy. A couple nights back my girlfriend and I set it loose on the apartment while we cooked dinner. By the time we were done preparing dinner we had fairly well cleaned floor with nearly no effort on our part. The best part was as we made a mess on the floor cooking, it cleaned up around us!
The only big failings are the small dirt container and the volume. It's pretty darn loud. Howevr, it does an awesome job with pet hair.
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.
Roomba works, sort of
by
hawaiian717
·
· Score: 2, Informative
We have a Roomba. It worked at first. Now it just shuts itself off a lot for no apparent reason. Also, as we originally received it, the container to hold the dirt wasn't held in properly so it would fall out, promptly dumping everything back on the floor. That problem is solved, but we still have the shut off problem. And it doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of actually cleaning (our floors are wood laminate, not carpet). The wheels seem to get out of alignment pretty easily. Right now we're trying to get our unit exchanged for one that actually works. Good to hear that people are having success with their Roombas, so the product really does work.
Slashdot Mirror
So when do we finally get the first Roomba/Segway crossover or the Type R|oomba?
Hate me!
...like I was, what the hell a Roomba was:
Roomba Homepage.
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
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
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
And a bunch of lonely geeks are reading about getting inside something that's known for sucking really well.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
"important information on how to kill a Roomba"
I thought we already acquired this vital information circa 1985? You just jump in the air and stomp on it. Or spit fireballs. Or get a starm... ohhhh Roomba.
Well, I guess those three techniques still work.
Thankfully we are already safe from the Bug-Bladdered Beast of Trall. Simply, close your eyes. Since, it thinks that if you can't see it, it can't see you.
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.
I'll remember that, next time that happens. Though, if it's a typical sci-fi/horror flick, my breakfast would be trying to eat me anyway.
The best way to kill one, though, would be to make a little trail of dirt that it follows around a corner, where you are waiting with a sledgehammer....
...
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
...probably works even better.
"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."
Pff, I didn't even bother reading the article. Everybody knows that to kill a Roomba you have to eat a mushroom, grow really big, then jump on it.
"Derp de derp."
What happens when you overclock a Roomb- Whoops! There goes the cat!
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Must be serendipity when you have two Slashdot articles, one on dissecting a poor, hapless appliance and one right under it covering when the puny humans pay for their transgressions
The roomba itself is a fine idea, but I think in my case, it would have to be accompanied with a larger model that is able to clear away the pop cans, pizza boxes, coffee cups and odd lost household pet -- petrol powered I would expect.
"I choose YOU Roomba-bot!"
Yuck. I feel dirty for the association.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
The other location of the same material:
http://www.tla.org/roomba
We have (or maybe I should say had) a Roomba in our house. I believe it was a beta model. It did a much better job than any of us expected making it around college student rooms, around in a bathroom, and even our porch. The only real complaint we had with its operations was the small size of it's container for storing whatever it vacumed.
It had quite a few nifty features. The led on it slowly changed from green, to yellow, to red as the battery drained. It'd be nice to see that on a notebook computer! Being a house full of computer science majors, quite a bit of time was spent figuring out what its algorithm was for room coverage. While we didn't get it all quite worked out, it seemed to hit all of the room.
Unfortunatly, it met a fairly quick end. After about two days, we found it running in a circle. Opening it up, we discovered that one of the wheel motors had actually siezed. We still haven't been able to find the appropriate motor on mouser or digikey. It doesn't matter too much as the final version should be on its way to us soon enough.
Would you do it for some scoobie crack?
http://www.tla.org/roomba
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*
A Roomba is great until it gets stuck behind your computer desk or wrapped up in something. Might as well get a puppy.
too late bitches!!! http://www.homebotics.com/
His ideas, as I understand them, are to build increasingly complex robots using subsumption architecture, i.e. simple behaviors like movement come first, then more complex behaviors are added in layers. His approach to AI is radically different approach than traditional symbolic processing AI.
His research raises all kinds of interesting questions about evolution, emergent behavior, and how to pass the Turing test.
here is a mirror: mirror
here is the first page (images are linked):
Disassembly Instruction
Like Tivo, Roomba is one of those marvelous technologies that makes you wonder how you ever lived without one. We are not affiliated with iRobot; however, if you don't own one yet, we recommend you get one now. One of the most frequent questions that I get from people is, "does it really clean?". Yes, and it does with grace. We praise their engineers for their cleverness and ingenuity that shall become self evident through the following pages.
It is a good idea to clean your Roomba before you start. After some trial and error we came up with the following procedure.
1: Turn off the robot.
2: Remove the Particle Bin, Vacuum Filter Door and Battery.
3: Remove the main Brush roller mechanism.
4: Remove the following screws.
image
5: Turn the robot over as one piece.
6: Slide off the top cover to reveal the control cable.
7: Disconnect the control cable from the motherboard and remove the top cover.
next page
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.
A maid is still cheaper, and (s)he does windows.
You can keep your robot.
.
I've just finally gotten used to having a robot running around the house. While it may seem to be superfluous gadget, let me tell ya it's darn handy. A couple nights back my girlfriend and I set it loose on the apartment while we cooked dinner. By the time we were done preparing dinner we had fairly well cleaned floor with nearly no effort on our part. The best part was as we made a mess on the floor cooking, it cleaned up around us!
The only big failings are the small dirt container and the volume. It's pretty darn loud. Howevr, it does an awesome job with pet hair.
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.
We have a Roomba. It worked at first. Now it just shuts itself off a lot for no apparent reason. Also, as we originally received it, the container to hold the dirt wasn't held in properly so it would fall out, promptly dumping everything back on the floor. That problem is solved, but we still have the shut off problem. And it doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of actually cleaning (our floors are wood laminate, not carpet). The wheels seem to get out of alignment pretty easily. Right now we're trying to get our unit exchanged for one that actually works. Good to hear that people are having success with their Roombas, so the product really does work.
And yes, it is irritatingly loud.
End of Line.