Page 389 - Hacking Roomba

370 Part III — More Complex Interfacing

Erdos

http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~dodds/erdos/
Erdos is an academic Roomba project created by Dr. Zachary Dodds and others at Harvey
Mudd College. Recognizing the Roomba as a low-cost but durable robotics platform, Erdos is
aimed at creating a teaching environment for robotics in the classroom. It has successfully been
used in the introductory Computer Science classes at Harvey Mudd and other schools.

Erdos consists of a Bluetooth-controlled Roomba, a Python language Roomba library, and an
overhead webcam-based vision system. The webcam provides the feedback needed to accurately
determine the robot’s position, and the Bluetooth connection allows state-of-the-art artificial
intelligence algorithms be run from large computer systems.
The low-cost, open architecture, and ruggedness of Roomba make it a perfect classroom addi-
tion, and Dr. Dodds is promoting Erdos for use in classrooms worldwide.

Roomba Costumes and Personalities

With their jaunty tunes and non-threatening shape, Roomba robots are friendly little gadgets.
Their owners become attached to them and even give them names. Is it any surprise that people
want to dress up their Roombas?

RoomBud Costumes by myRoomBud

http://myroombud.com/

myRoomBud is a company that makes a line of Roomba costumes, called RoomBuds.
Figure 16-7 shows some of the costumes available. They are extremely cute and leave Roomba
totally functional. The wall sensor, side brush, and remote control sensor are all unobstructed.
It does cover up the buttons on the top, but if you use the remote this isn’t really an issue.
Each RoomBud outfit has a cute name like Roobit the Frog or Mooba the Cow. The costumes
transform Roomba from a vacuum cleaner to a pet (if it wasn’t already one for you). In addition
to the Roomba outfits, myRoomBud is working on a line of costumes for the iRobot Scooba,
called ScooBuds.
The team of four young entrepreneurs who started myRoomBud are all Roomba enthusiasts
who wanted Roomba outfits for themselves. After creating costumes for their own Roombas
and for family members’ Roombas, they decided they were onto something and started selling
them online. There was definitely demand for Roomba fashion accessories. And myRoomBud
has been featured on major websites and cable TV shows. myRoomBud is a profitable, private
company built and run by the kids who started it.