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...
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.
Isn't this old news?
by
Arcaeris
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· 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.
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....
-- ...
A hammer...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Roomba Name sounds kind of familiar...
by
euxneks
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· 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.
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
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· 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.
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.
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.
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....
...
...probably works even better.
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
"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?
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.
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.
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.