Technabob » roomba

Super Mario and Zelda Roombas: Beware the Goomba Roomba

Conner Flynn — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 23:00:12 +0000

These custom Super Mario and Zelda themed Roomba covers are awesome and adorable. It’s like the games coming alive in your living room, while your place is simultaneously getting cleaned. How cool is that?

Sadly we can’t have these in our own homes, because these particular covers were created for last Fall’s SUPER iam8bit, a group art exhibition that showcased over 100 artists bringing to life their 80′s video game memories, and they’re already spoken for. These cute floor dwellers come from a collaboration between iRobot and fiber artist Kelice Penney.

There’s the Goomba from the Super Mario games, green and red Koopa shells from Super Mario Kart and even the Octorok from The Legend of Zelda. I wish I could have these guys roaming around my house. Maybe they will be mass-produced some day. What other spinny video game characters do you think would make a good Roomba?

Robot Vacuum Alarm Clock Pulls Your Blankets off to Wake You, Poops Cubes

Conner Flynn — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:00:41 +0000

Let’s merge the alarm clock and a Roomba so we can have one less gadget to clutter the home. That’s Seoul-based designer Jeongmi Lee’s thinking here. He designed a domestic robot that yanks your blanket off the bed in the morning to wake you.

Of course it will also do the vacuuming like a good little servant and you won’t even need to clean the air filter since it does this itself by pooping a the debris out in cube form. I hope it at least has it’s own box where it leaves these robo-treats.

Just tie it to your bedding and activate it with a timer to make it run away when the alarm is activated, pulling the covers off. It wakes you every morning and then poops. Then, I assume you change the filter. So basically you just had a baby.

[via Greenmuze]

Hull Bug: An Underwater Roomba for Barnacles

Range — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:00:49 +0000

Apparently, barnacles are a big problem for ships, which is why the Navy deployed their own version of an underwater Roomba to take care of the hulls of their ships. The Hull Bug is a robotic vacuum especially made for taking care of this problem.

The Hull Bug is made by Sea Robotics and is currently being tested by the Navy for another 2 years. The Hull Bug is a lot more complicated than a Roomba because it needs its own sensors and algorithms, as well as functioning as a fully automated submersible. Of course, it also has to be fully waterproof and cling to the hull of a ship too. The little robot is less than 3 feet long and weighs less than 50 pounds.

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Barnacles can decrease the speed of a ship by 10% and increase fuel consumption by 40%, so something like this is critical to maintaining ships.

[via Fast Company via Ubergizmo]

Roomba Vacuum Controlled By Microsoft Kinect

Shane McGlaun — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 19:48:40 +0000

We can all agree that vacuuming sucks. It’s no fun to push that thing around the house sucking up all the debris and dirt that you and your family schleps inside. I have always thought that the inventor the Roomba should have been nominated for a Nobel Prize of some sort. After all, with that little bot we can brush all the crumbs on the floor and not worry about having to clean them up later, the robot will do it for you.

Now, a geek in Japan has taken his Roomba and cobbled it and the Microsoft Kinect together in a mash up that allows him to control the Roomba using gestures sensed by the Kinect. The controls allow the guy to pretend to be pushing a vacuum back and forth and the Roomba moves forward when he does and backwards with him.

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It also supports other gestures as you can see in the video above. The downside I see is that the point of the Roomba is to not have to push the thing. Still, it’s a pretty cool hack and making a game out of this might actually get my kids to clean up after themselves.

[via NYT]

Roombas Only Clean Houses to Support Their Sumo Wrestling Careers

Lambert Varias — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:33:46 +0000

That’s right, by day Roombas are just plain ol’ cleaners, but at night, they sneak off to Lithuania and compete in underground sumo competitions.

Okay actually the 2009 Baltic Robot Sumo Cup wasn’t illegal; in fact it was sponsored by major robotics companies like iRobot and ABB. 60 robots participated in 3 categories – Mini Sumo, 3 kg Sumo, and of course Roomba Sumo. But it was really held in Lithuania. And Roombas really do sneak off at night. They meet with other miniscule warriors and oshitaoshi the circuits out of each other. True story.

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Of course the only move that these robots have is “push”, but I’m sure ten to fifteen years from now, when Roomba v. 10.10 or something will be out, and it’ll look like a human, only with 4 arms and missiles for fingers, we’ll all look back to these pioneers, and curse iRobot for coming up with the darned things, because obviously we’ll be the ones who are cleaning the Roomba’s homes at that point. So enjoy their limited functionality and their silent yet comedic fights, because it won’t last long folks. It won’t! What was I talking about? Oh right, android tennis! Awesome stuff.

[via BotJunkie]

Roombas Make Dazzling Time-Lapse Light Paintings

Technabob — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:43:45 +0000

Ever wonder what sort of stuff was running through the electronic brain of your Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner? These wonderful time-lapse photos should give you a pretty good idea of what your Roomba has been up to.

These amazing photographs were made by strapping a colored LED to the top of Roomba vacuums and then capturing extra-long exposure photos (known as “light paintings”). It’s sort of like looking at a neon Spirograph and spider web rolled into one. I’ve posted a few of my favorites in the gallery below…

You can check out the complete archive of Roomba light art over at the Roomba Art Flickr pool. My Hoover definitely can’t do this.

[via New World Geek via Make:]

Pac-Man Roomba Eats All Your Dirt Pellets

Alisha K. — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:03:15 +0000

As devices go, the Roomba is pretty cool on its own. It’s a useful machine and a fun toy all in one, so dressing it up can seem a little gratuitous. But if you turn your Roomba into Pac-Man… well, that’s just awesome. Especially if you use hilarious and appropriate sound effects.

With cleverly placed and wired yellow LEDs, a little white Roomba become a flashing, shining Pac-Man, who also apparently promises better cleaning time. The mod means he powers up when he eats carpet grime, I guess. Definitely on the list of most random (and amusing) mods ever.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via Boing Boing Gadgets]

Panasonic Fukitorimushi: the Roomba’S Strange New Robot Floor Cleaner Rival

Lambert Varias — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:28:25 +0000

Panasonic demoed their own robot floor cleaner at the Tokyo Fiber Senseware exhibition in Milan. It’s called the “fukitorimushi” (wipe-up bug), although if you ask me “Creepy Pillow” would be a better name for it. The high-tech pillow cleaner detects dust and dirt using “blue-white light” and then cleans ‘em up using a cutting-edge nanocloth developed by Teijin Ltd.

According to Chris Davies of Slash Gear, the nanocloth is made of “thousands of polyester filament fibers each 7,500x thinner than a human hair.” When it spots dirt, fukitorimushi’s “eyes” will flash red, and the robot will furiously crawl all over the place until its target is eliminated.

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Like the more colorful and less creepy Roomba, Fukitorimushi can also dock itself into its charging station when it needs to recharge, but it still needs some TLC from its owners because the nanocloth will have to be replaced once in a while. Which is why Panasonic says that the owners of a fukitorimushi will gain more than a cleaner but also a pet. The Roomba, on the other hand, becomes a source of amusement if its owners already have a pet.