A Roomba With A View
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Roomba hacking sounds promising, but THIS seems a little extreme doesn't it? |
The iRobot company is opening the Roomba's robotic vacuum to third part developers.
In early July the company will post instructions for controlling its Roomba vacuum cleaner via the built-in serial port, so programmers can modify it however they want -- from equipping it with a camera to, yes, adding an arm and training it to retrieve brewskis. iRobot hopes the move will foster the development of Roomba accessories -- like the ecosystem of add-ons that has sprung up around the iPod -- thus driving sales.
Others are already contemplating using the Roomba as a sort of robotic security camera - allowing you to control a mobile home camera from a webpage.
This is just in time for the third generation Roombas that will be released later this summer.