A few weeks ago, I was coerced by my girlfriend into buying one of those silly "floor cleaning robots". Yes, I mean a Roomba. I was skeptical, but I sat down and did some research. Little did I know that while I had been slaving away religiously vacuuming my own floors (ok, occasionally vacuuming my own floors…) since the first Roomba came out in 2002, the makers at iRobot had made amazing strides in autonomous floor cleaning technology!
While version 1 Roombas seemed to bumble around like an aimless freshman in orientation week, the current Roombas promise not to lodge themselves under your furniture or toss themselves down your stairs, can be scheduled to clean when you're not home, and even charge themselves! These videos convinced me that these little guys are actual engineered robots now-a-days.
So, after explaining to my cat that there would be a new addition to the family soon, I ran out that very night to bring home her new little sister, a 530 Series Roomba. I tore into the package like a kid on Christmas morning (or like an engineer opening up a floor cleaning robot). After naming her and waiting the agonizingly long 16 hours for the first battery charge, I started to step through the instructions. While flipping through the pages I was given one of the biggest, best surprises I’ve had in a long time.
Instead of a disclaimer about how any modification to Roomba would void her warrantee, I found a message encouraging programmers, engineers, and electronics enthusiasts to modify and add on to Roomba! They even put a serial connection in and provided a full set of commands (called ROI 500 or Roomba Open Interface 500) to completely control Roomba with a microcontroller or Bluetooth device! Thanks iRobot for embracing the robot enthusiasts at home. I look forward to collaborating with you from my apartment.
