Page 128 - Hacking Roomba

Reading the chapter

Roomba Sensors

robot without sensors is merely a fancy machine. Some robots use
humans as their sensors (and brain). If you’ve ever watched Battle
ABots or similar programs, you’ve seen what are really telepresence
robots and not robots in the purer sense of the term.
Human senses have a huge range of fidelity. The ear and eye can detect in this chapter
information through a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The
sense of touch can detect heat and cold, variations in pressure, and damage. Send and receive
The vestibular system provides a high-resolution sense of balance and ori-
entation. By comparison, a robot’s sensors are typically very simple. They sensor details
detect a single, very specific kind of information: a touch sensor that trig-
gers a switch, an “eye” that detects only a single color of light and only one Master the ROI
pixel, or an “ear” that can only hear on frequency of sound. SENSORS command
Currently, creating sensors that mimic the dynamic range of human senses
is expensive and computationally complex. As we have learned from the Parse sensor data
simpler life forms, sensors don’t need to be complex or high-fidelity to be
useful. And as the subsumption architecture style of AI has shown, any Make Roomba
interaction with the environment is better than none. autonomous
The Roomba has a wide variety of sensors for a robot that is so inexpensive
and so single purpose. Roomba has touch sensors, rudimentary vision, and Measure distance
an internal sense of orientation, just like the people it works for, but you’ll and angles
find its version of those senses are both unique to it and much simplified.
And unlike people, you’ll see it has a sense for dirt that could be best Spy on your
described as licking the carpet. Roomba

Roomba Sensors

Figure 6-1 shows the location of all the physical sensors present in Roomba.
The entire front bumper is bristling with sensors. It is the Roomba’s “head”
in more than one way. In normal operation, the Roomba always moves for-
ward, so it can observe the world.