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Wheeee! These domesticated prairie dogs have got it all figured out. The buzzing machine is a vehicle of some sort.
-via I Heart Chaos
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What kind of personality does your Roomba have? None, I suppose. But what kind should it have? Researchers in the Netherlands from Delft University of Technology, Delft, and Philips Research, Eindhoven, gathered a focus group together to decide what kind traits your vacuum should have if the technology were available to give it a personality.
The busy Dutch team were asked to rate a notional future robot vacuum cleaner’s personality traits for desirability, and it was determined that the robot should be calm, friendly, like routines, but definitely not be talkative *. The next part of the study involved a group of human actors, who were asked to act like a robotic vacuum cleaner displaying the desired characteristics which had been determined in part one.
The actors’ routines were rated and they were found to be good vacuum cleaners. If you want to be entertained, you only need to add a cat. Link
New Roomba-like household robots are popping every day, now. The Windoro consists of two scrubbing modules, one on each side of the glass, held together with magnets:
The robot uses distance sensors, attitude adjustment, and obstacle detection while doing its little window waltz, employing detergent and a series of spinning pads to wash up as it goes.
This robot was developed by the Pohang Institute of Intelligent Robotics in South Korea. You can watch a video of the robot in action at the link.
[YouTube - Link]
There’s a German robot named Robotinho that cruises around on 4 linked Roombas, operating as a tour guide at the Deutsches Museum Bonn. I would be terrified to follow it around from exhibit to exhibit, as its awkward facial muscles twitched into unnatural expressions and it spewed out museum facts. The robot apocalypse is upon us, and it’s riding on Roombas.
Via BotJunkie
We’ve seen a cat riding a Roomba. Now here’s a soft-shelled turtle doing it. He doesn’t appear to enjoy it as much.
via Geekologie
Three computer scientists at Colorado University programmed several Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners to act like Pac-Man and the ghosts which chase him. Jack Elston, Cory Dixon, and Maciej Stachura did so in order to demonstrate the unmanned aerial system that they are developing. Click on the link for more videos, pictures, and schematics for this project.
Link via CrunchGear
iRobot, the company that invented the Roomba household vacuuming robot, is developing a robot that locomotes by inflating and deflating sections of its outer skin, moving contents inside toward its destination. Kristina Grifantini writes at MIT’s Technology Review:
This week at IROS 09 (Intelligent Robots and Systems), iRobot and the University of Chicago unveiled a soft, blobby robot that looks something like an inflating marshmallow.
The new robot, called chembot, changes the shape of its stretchy polymer skin using a technique called “jamming skin enabled locomotion”. This means that different sections of the robot inflate or deflate separately; controlling this inflation and deflation enables the robot to move. DARPA, which is funding the project, hopes to use the robot to squeeze into small holes or under doors, which I’m guessing would be used for sophisticated surveillance.
Link via Geekologie | Company Website
Blogger Signaltheorist decided to evaluate the efficiency of the Roomba by tracking its movements:
I set up a photo camera in my room, turned out all the lights and took a long-exposure shot of my roomba doing it’s thing for about 30 minutes. The result is a picture that shows the path of the roomba through it’s cleaning cycle, it looks like a flight map or something. It really hits every spot!
Link via J-Walk Blog
Technically it’s an iRobot, but it’s pretty much the same thing. It kinda reminds me of Dr. Robotnik’s creations, only alot less evil.
– via Make
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by JKirchartz.
