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iRobot patents 'Celestial Navigation System' for the Roomba
While Roomba's automated approach to floor cleaning might've been novel for its day, its random bumbling is starting to look dated, particularly in comparison to laser-guided, ultra smart vacuums like the Neato XV-11. Well, iRobot is naturally not going to take this lying down, and the company has received a patent for a new "Celestial Navigation System" based on IR beacons bounced off walls and ceilings that the Roomba can track and calculate its position from. It doesn't sound as fancy as Neato's completely self-contained system, and it'll require the setup of multiple beacons throughout the house to make the bot self-sufficient, but we're guessing it requires less processing and gadgetry on board to pull off -- which hopefully means Roomba can stuff this into bots cheaper than Neato's $400 XV-11. Mint, which was supposed to ship this summer from Evolution Robotics, uses a similar system to the one iRobot is proposing and has a rumored price of under $250.
Roomba saves child from deadly Viper, challenges Tango to a fight
We've always known that the Roomba was something of a bad-ass -- iRobot, after all, has quite a reputation within the defense industry -- so we weren't surprised when one of the autonomous vacuum cleaners took down a certain Vipera palaestinae (a venomous snake found in the Middle East). Considered a leading cause of snakebites within its geographic range, the snake was found mangled 'round one of the robot's rotating brushes when Eli and Efi Frida returned to their home in Galilee, which they share with their two children, aged four and seven (as well as several cats and dogs). "We were very lucky," said Eli, "If the snake would have hid in the house and bitten one of the children it could have ended badly."
iRobot creates new business unit for healthcare robotics
Well, it doesn't have a Roomba that will check up on your vitals just yet, but it looks like iRobot is betting on healthcare robotics in a fairly big way, with it taking advantage of the recent TEDMED conference to announce that it's forming a new business unit focused solely on the still burgeoning industry. That unit will be headed up by Tod Loofbourrow, who says that he believes the business "has the potential to make a significant difference in the field of healthcare," and adds that he thinks "the long-term potential of robotics to extend independent living is profound." While he's just as light on specifics, iRobot CEO Colin Angle is no less ambitious about the company's goals, saying that iRobot's "healthcare mission is add a million years of independent living to our customers." And in case you're wondering, the image at right isn't an iRobot robot, but it is all too real.
iRobot shape-shifting ChemBot is back, and it's bad (video)
As you know, when iRobot isn't hard at work developing some adorable automated vacuum cleaners, it has a quite lucrative sideline in DARPA-funded research projects. On that front, it looks like we finally have some results to report back on that ChemBot project that first appeared on our radar early last year. Unveiled at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) yesterday, this palm-sized troublemaker is being billed as "the first demonstration of a completely soft, mobile robot using jamming as an enabling technology." The "jamming" in question is something called "jamming skin enabled locomotion," which traps air and a collection of loosely packed particles in a package made of silicon rubber. When air is removed from the pocket, the silicon restricts and seems to solidify. The robot consists of several of these pockets, which can be inflated or deflated separately, giving the device the ability to perform simple actions. This is all pretty rudimentary at the moment, but who knows? We may see Flubber in our time, after all. Video after the break.
Patent app shows Roombas pooping on potties, being big boys
Roomba vacuums tend to be pretty self-sufficient, cleaning floors, committing burglaries, and even making futile attempts at communication. Cleaning themselves, however, is something they cannot do, but that may change if a recently unearthed 2007 patent application filed by iRobot ever results in an actual product. The app shows a variety of designs for docks that would either suck the detritus right out of your little guy or replace its dirt cartridge altogether, strip any wound-up hair from its brushes, and then send it back on its way to give your cat a lift to is litter box. No word on whether iRobot has something based on these designs anywhere near production-ready, but we wouldn't recommend giving away that robot changing table.
iRobot's new Roomba patent could clean those hard to reach areas, get stuck there
When most kids our age were cutting class to play Mike Tyson's Punch Out, the latch key kids over at Robot Stock News were taking apart their step father's vacuum. And as we grew up, all the while developing relationships with cellphone tipsters and eventually becoming successful tech bloggers in our own right, the Robot Stock News kids were also able to take their obsessive geek tendencies and make a name for themselves -- combing the interwebs, paying off high priced vacuum ninjas, and scouring the US Patent database for any and all news featuring many of our country's leading autonomous vacuum cleaners. They must have been really stoked to stumble upon a patent filed in November 2008, entitled "Compact Autonomous Coverage Robot." As far as we can tell, this document (filed by iRobot) details a Roomba with a squared off front, designed to hit those hard to reach corners that the traditional circular device cannot. This design change, while it seems minor, actually lends a level of complexity to the device: a square robot requires more complex programming, lest it get stuck in a niche that its round faced predecessor could never reach in the first place. Of course, there's no telling when (or if) this one will see the light of day, but you'll know as soon as we do. Promise.[Via Robot Stock News]
iRobot's military Ember bots are tiny treaded hotspots
Remember the LANDroids initiative, which resulted in iRobot scoring a $2.5 million contract to create tiny, miniaturized bots that could crawl through battlefields and your nightmares? The company is showing off the early fruits of that contract, the Ember microbot, which is so small it slipped entirely under our radar. It's not quite as tiny as DARPA seemed to hope, which depicted a bot little bigger than a pack of cards, but shrinking a Packbot down to paperback size is no small task -- even it is a James Clavell paperback. The bot's primary function is to set up a roving military network on the battlefield, but, with an integrated webcam and extension via USB and SDIO, who knows what kind of functionality they'll provide. The goal is to get these down to $100 or less, and for that price we could see plenty of civilians investing in these just to keep an eye on the activities of household pet insurgents. [Via Robot Stock News]
Video: Roomba hacked to trail sand on your floor
Of all of the Roomba mods we've seen, this is definitely one of them. Just in time to celebrate its entry into the Robot Hall Of Fame, the heads at iRobot have mashed up the happy-go-lucky autonomous vacuum with an old inkjet printer, creating a device that can not only indulge in something called Rangoli, but look great doing it. Just make sure you have another one of these guys on hand to sweep up after you're done playing. As you are no doubt aware, Rangoli is a traditional form of Indian sandpainting -- but we're guessing that the "iRobot" and "i (heart) Robots" messages are not among the motifs one usually finds in front of people's homes and places of worship on the Subcontinent. Check it out on video after the break.
Robot Hall of Fame expands to include Da Vinci, Terminator, Roomba
Forget those "sporting" Halls of Fame -- the real HOF is right here. Since 2003, the Robot Hall of Fame has been honoring robots and creators at an exhibit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and now we're seeing the latest handful of noteworthy creatures take their rightful place in history. For those unaware, the Robot HOF is maintained by Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Science Center, and an international jury of researchers, writers, and designers has just selected five new bots to join the cast: Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the T-800 Terminator (yes, that Terminator), the Da Vinci surgical system, iRobot's Roomba and 'Huey, Dewey, and Louie' from the 1972 sci-fi flick Silent Running. Could you have imagined a more fitting five? If so, sound off below!
Roomba mod allows it to pick things up, hand them to you
Sure, we've seen some wild Roomba mods, but overall it's pretty much a low-to-the-ground affair -- unless you get the cats involved, of course. That's apparently changing, though -- check out this robotic grasping system, which can pick up foreign objects and deliver them to you at about waist height. The system was 95 percent effective in picking up objects of all sizes and shapes during trials, and it was apparently quite simple to build and code. Nice for a Roomba, sure, but we'd rather be partying with SOBEaR. Video after the break.[Thanks, Travis]
iRobot engineer builds stair-climbing robot for Masters thesis, not release
What does an iRobot engineer do for their Masters thesis? Build a robot, of course -- and, in the case of this one particular unnamed engineer, a stair-climbing robot. Unfortunately, any other details are a bit hard to come by, but it looks like the folks at iRobot were impressed enough with the bot to throw a short video of it up on the company's official YouTube channel. As you can see for yourself after the break, while it is a bit on the pokey side, it certainly seems to be more than capable of performing the task at hand with ease, and with some satisfactory buzzing and whirring sounds to boot.
iRobot says its Warrior bot is more human than ASIMO
Is a humanoid robot inherently more human than your average task-specific bot? iRobot apparently doesn't think so, and it's taken square aim at one of the most popular humanoid bots around to make its point. That argument arose in a recent interview with CNET News, where iRobot CEO Colin Angle responded to a question about humanoid robots by flatly asking, "why would you want to make a humanoid robot?," adding that they might be good for movies or those looking for a robot companion, "but other than that, most tasks are best tackled by designs that are not constrained by trying to look like a person." He then goes on to note that Honda's ASIMO "requires a team of 10 or 15 people to maintain it, it can walk about, maybe, half a meter per second and in some situations climb stairs over the course of a few minutes, and if it ever falls down, it's a paperweight." On the other hand, iRobot's Warrior bot, he says, "can take a 10-foot drop onto concrete, drive 20 miles an hour, drive up stairs without stopping at full speed, carry 200 pounds of payload and has, maybe, five motors," which means it can "go nearly everywhere a human can." So, Angle says, "you look at these things and say, which one of these is a robot human? The answer is, Warrior." Is it? Or, deep down, is there a little bit of ASIMO in all of us?
Engadget's recession antidote: win an iRobot Roomba Pet 562!
This whole global economic crisis, and its resulting massive loss of jobs got us thinking. We here at Engadget didn't want to stand helplessly by, announcing every new round of misery without giving anything back -- so we decided to take the opportunity to spread a little positivity. We'll be handing out a new gadget every day (except for weekends) to lucky readers until we run out of stuff / companies stop sending things. Today we've got an iRobot Roomba Pet 562 on offer. Read the rules below (no skimming -- we're omniscient and can tell when you've skimmed) and get commenting!Special thanks to iRobot for providing the gear!The rules: Leave a comment below. Any comment will do, but if you want to share the name of your favorite pet, that would be cool too (FYI: ours are Salvador and Penny) You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you'll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.) If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you'll be fine. Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don't make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad. Winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive one iRobot Roomba Pet 562. Approximate value is $399. If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen. Entries can be submitted until Mondy, March 30th, 11:59PM ET. Good luck! Full rules can be found here.
MIT dreams of fully autonomous greenhouse, will definitely make it happen
You know what's hard to find these days? Consistency and reliability -- in anything, really. But we've learned that when MIT touches something, it not only gets done, but it gets done right. Thus, we're absolutely elated to hear that a few of its students have dreamed up a fully autonomous greenhouse, utilizing real plants, sensors and gardening robots to ensure the greenest, most healthy crop possible. In fairness, we've already seen oodles of robotic plant tending apparatuses, but this is just something special. Thus far, gurus have used "re-imagined versions of iRobot's Roomba" in order to tell what a plant needs and then respond accordingly, and apparently, things have been going quite well early on. Check out a demonstration vid just past the break.[Via MAKE]
Brown University, DARPA give iRobot's PackBot autonomy
It's not easy to find research in the field of robotics without military applications (or military funding), and Brown University's latest is certainly no exception. Starting out with iRobot's PackBot (and some pocket change from DARPA and the Office of Naval Intelligence) researchers at the school have achieved several advances that will someday produce robots that follow both verbal and nonverbal commands from a human operator, indoors and out, without the need for a controlled environment or special clothing. The goal, according to Chad Jenkins, is to develop a robot that acts "like a partner. You don't want to puppeteer the robot. You supervise it, 'Here's your job. Now, go do it.'" The work is being presented this week at the Human-Robot Interaction conference in San Diego, but if you can't make it we've provided a video of the thing in action just for you (after the break). We for one salute our autonomous robot overlords.[Via PhysOrg]
iRobot's ConnectR gets sent to wherever robots go when they die
It's a sad, sad day for telepresence. iRobot's ConnectR, the Roomba with a webcam on top, has been given the knife, deemed "not yet practical enough" for all you oh-so practical consumers out there. The device, which pledged to let you call home and explore your abode like some domesticated rover, stood poised to open new avenues for the confusion of cats and other small pets. Perhaps $500 was a bit too steep for the beta group, or maybe users spending that much wanted something that looked a little less like a sentient vacuum, but, regardless of the reason, we're not expecting anything like this to hit retail until we pull ourselves out of these economic doldrums. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Video: iRobot Looj hands on shows improved leaf carnage
It was at last year's CES that we first got our hands on iRobot's Looj, and while easy gutter cleaning is something most homeowners can appreciate, the thing did have some issues that left many users tossing the things out with the decomposing crud it was supposed to fling. Enter the Looj second generation, which includes a flexible auger that should keep the thing from flipping itself over, a tool-free battery door, and a faster reverse speed to get the thing back to your ladder in half the time. Nothing revolutionary, but some much-needed updates that will be available this spring for $129, and we were impressed with the sheer spite the thing displayed against a mock gutter full of faux leaves. Video below -- user discretion advised. %Gallery-41255%
Roomba 530 Wall-E edition proves even robots are corrupted by money
It's 2008 and we've finally achieved the ultimate goal of modern robotics. No, not singularity... better: a cross-promotional marketing deal between the world's leading robots. Meet the Wall-E edition of iRobot's Roomba 530. The special edition Roomba is just like the original 530 only with the addition of that magnificent sticker for a extra ¥5,000 (about $50) premium. 400 units of the limited run vacuumbots are scheduled to go on sale in Japan for ¥,84,500 (tax inclusive) starting November 20th. Tsk tsk, what's Eve going to say?
Popular Mechanics offers preview of Singapore's TechX robot challenge
We haven't heard a whole lot about Singapore's DARPA-esque TechX robot challenge since it first kicked off early last year, but with the final round getting underway on Sunday, Popular Mechanics has now thankfully offered up a preview of what's in store. Among those set to compete is the so-called Uni-Seeker bot (pictured above) from Nanyang Technological University, which is a heavily modded incarnation of iRobot's ATRV Junior robot, and one of only six bots that managed to make it through all the qualifying rounds. Others include the considerably more intimidating AZROBOWAR Sharp Shooter, built completely from scratch, and a pair of robots built on iRobot's popular PackBot platform. From the looks of it, they'll each have their work cut out for them in the big event, with them required to start outside and navigate their way inside a building, then climb a flight of stairs, travel up an elevator, touch a few targets, and then exit the building again -- without any human intervention, and in less than an hour. That $700,000 prize should provide plenty of motivation, though.
iRobot's Roomba Pet torments the dog, sweeps away dander
iRobot just announced its new Roomba Pet robotic vacuum cleaners. Boasting the core tech found in the 530 and 560 series of vacuums, the Roomba 532 ($349) and more advanced 562 ($399, includes on-board scheduling) Pet series feature higher capacity sweeper bins; counter-rotating, carpet-digging brushes; and additional accessories to keep those brushes hair and dander free. We hear it's pretty good at herding the kids too. Available now.
