Roomba Competitor Slightly Lacking

tivojafa writes "Following hot on the heels of the Roomba vacuum cleaner, TV Products (USA) Inc have released the "RoboSweep" - "The intelligent sweeper that sweeps while you rest!". Roomba by iRobot is an engineering masterpiece with 15 sensors and 5 motors to navigate and clean the floors. It has been stripped apart and there are rumors of a replacement processor so it can be used as a general purpose robot platform. Now the RoboSweep "intelligent" sweeper has redefined intelligence (or lack of it) - the internals have got to be seen to be believed." Very funny.

Comments

been done...

[jayratch]

I had a toy like this when I was a kid. I think we bought it at a flea market for like $15... although it didn't pretend to clean floors, it had a much cooler action robot head that moved its arms!

Re:seems like an easy project

[EinarH]

soo... who's going to be the first to get linux running on it?

For all that we know it could allready be running Linux.

iRobot also makes the PackBot, a unmanned robust robot for reconnaissance operations in urban terrain.
The robot is developed for the US Military, its DARPA founded, and it runs Linux.

More info here

Through the Tactical Mobile Robotics Program (TMR), the PackBot mobile robot got a new rugged hardware housing that supported significantly more substantial electronics. In fact, the new processor and motherboard booted a Linux kernel in under 12 seconds - just turn on and go! With such substantial computing on-board, the first robot operating system AWARE(TM) was born.

Personally I find this far more interesting than this "sweeper".

Re:Rodney Brooks (Tortoises)

[cheesedog]

I took Brook's "Embodied Intelligence" at MIT. Want to know the funny thing? One of his sources of inspiration were the 1950s work of Grey Walter, called "tortoises." What were tortoises? Little more than a servo hooked up to a differential which would spin and move forward in a random fashion.

But even 1950s tech was ahead of the Robosweep. It did have a single light sensor, and through some clever work by Davis, could be constructed so that when their batteries started to run low, would make their way back to a recharging hut, given that the hut had a bright light in it.

If the robosweep could accomplish as much without any central processor (lack of central processing is, after all, one of the tenets of Brooks subsumption architecture, and thus part of the design of the Roomba), I'm sure Rodney would applaud the feat.

Re:You brought it on yourself

[GigsVT]

You're talking about a guy who named all 268 of his sons "George Foreman".

The hilarious part to this is that he has sold the use of the name "George Foreman", in perpetuity, to Salton, Inc for 110 million dollars.

Dumb boxer ain't so dumb, eh? :) I sold my Salton stock after finding that out. I don't guess his Sons will mind too much that he sold their soul, especially if the republicans get their way with the inheritance tax.