Roomba manufacturer iRobot has released a new, programmable vacuuming robot with a “virtual walls” feature to keep the little guy penned in to a particular area. A $60 software/hardware upgrade is also available to late-model Roomba owners. Also from iRobot comes PackBot, a small reconnaissance robot for military use.
Maybe I’m too messy, but I just don’t see enough AI in these little guys.
Reminds me of when I lived with the parents. You gotta clean up your room before the cleaning lady comes.
Now they just need to make a little bot that will pick your dirty clothes off the floor, wet towels off the bad, and takes cups back to the kitchen.
Well he said it was programmable…so it must have some sorta coding in it…so it does relate…but its a longgg stretch to be sure
yea i got modded down for suggesting as much…. looks like you are on your way out toooo…
i think it is a bit toooooo much of a stretch, keep it about interesting stuff PLEASE!
That’s why it’s a valid story.
Besides…it’s a robot! ! !
Have robots become so commonplace and trivial that an article about a *frikkin robot that cleans your house* is greeted with a chorus of “so what”?
well i guess a machine that has suction and can be programmed to do different things could certainly be useful if it comes as a kit and I can program it to do EXACTLY what I want…
nah, not really a osnews story
Those of you complaining that this doesn’t belong on OSNews have not read the article. Below, I will highlight key points of the article:
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This is an opportunity for other companies to piggyback on iRobot platforms. The Roomba has a serial port,” he said. “There is a group that is working very seriously on a physical avatar. I might log into a Web page and see what the robot sees and be able to drive the robot via my Web page…You could have a wireless Web cam and serve it up to the grid.
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This is very cool!
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The military, meanwhile, continues to invest in autonomous vehicles. The Army has deployed PackBot, a reconnaissance robot from iRobot, to scope out caves and other dangerous locales in Afghanistan and Iraq. The company is also building a smaller and lighter version of PackBot, called the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV) under a $51 million contract with the Army’s Future Combat Systems program.
The ultimate idea behind the SUGV and the Future Combat Systems Program is to create a fleet of robots that can be deployed rapidly and gather intelligence about unfolding situations.
“It is all about picking out the enemy in a sea of noncombatants,” Angle said. “The right people can get the right information and send it back down to the people at the pointy end of the spear…The human has always got to be in the loop when you get to any fire decisions, but you could have an automated system sifting through data that you want a human to see.”
Some military robots could also be equipped with non-lethal weapons like stun-guns, Angle speculated.
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Angle further added that iRobot is conducting tests on swarming robots, generally smaller autonomous vehicles that can communicate with each other and coordinate their actions.
In one experiment at the company, 128 swarming robots diffused across an area to find an object. The robots could tell their relative position to one another through wireless communication. If one died, a neighbor would shuffle over to take its place, inciting a chain reaction until the vacancies got filled.
“Each robot could only see or hear for about four feet,” he said. “You’d see when robots recognized when they were on a frontier. They would push into the frontier and drag others with it.”
Properly equipped, these sort of robots could provide a map or inside view of current activities inside a building, similar to the “bugs” in Minority Report.
Researchers at the company also got the robots to play music together.
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This whole segment, especially the part about the swarming robots, is also very interesting and offers a peek towards what the future could bring us. I’m very excited to hear more, personally.
well i searched on google for operating system news and got OSNEWS, guess someone needs to change some keywords and so forth seems like someone is keyword loading or soemthing….
so you think having 128 swarming robots has something to do with operating systems or even computing…
I recommend you read up on this a little:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_Intelligence
Ignoring the fact that swarm intelligence (in this context) is a branch of computer science, imagine how this could apply to operating systems and applications in general.
so where are teh cell phone reviews, the new computerized oven, havent seen too many articles about telescopes yet some have serial or other pports and are computer controlled/programmable…
This should have been something that people here would be interested in, since it’s a great window into the world of robotics with an immediate useful outcome (a clean house), and it seems like it could be easily modifiable to perform other tasks such as frightening household pets. The Roomba is really a computer with a vaccuum cleaner as an output device.
It’s a shame that it’s really not an article that interests the people here.
By the way, notice how 13 of the 20 articles on the front page today are not strictly about operating systems. Most of them are about platforms – platforms that operating systems run on, and platforms that will run on the operating system.
fair enough….
as i said i have never complained about the content but I dont see how this applies to the whole platform/OS/licensing type of stuff I usually see on OSnews and I think if they are this broad and I have to constantly weed thru telescope articles, router articles, roomba articles, and so forth then I wont find osnews quite so appealing….
“since it’s a great window into the world of robotics with an immediate useful outcome (a clean house), and it seems like it could be easily modifiable to perform other tasks such as frightening household pets”
sorry but I think this is more a yahoo-misc technology article, or a good housekeeping or so forth…
i think osnews should be a bit more focused, not toooo focused but not toooo broad…
Well, they have sold a bunch, so maybe. But then the people who buy them are lazy messy people so the roomba is probably trapped under a 3 feet tall pile of dirty underwear.
The problem with the roomba is it calls it’self a vacuum, but it’s not, it’s a sweeper. It’s only good for sucking up some dust and debri on floors. But it won’t clean a carpet for anything. There is a reason why real vacuums are so much bigger and not cordless.
heck ya, they are great. who wants to spend time sweeping the floor when a robot can do it for you, a programmable robot at that. neat.
anyway, if you must have OS something for this to be interesting, they do mention their platform for their swarm r&d and their own SwarmOS here :
http://irobot.com/governmentindustrial/product_detail.cfm?prodid=33
At least its not an advertisement for an mp3 player.
Eugenia decided to leave…
All complainers: you could create your own website and reports about operating systems if you disagree with the content here. You don’t have to come here if the site isn’t what you are wanting to read.
If you are a paying subscriber, I guess your opinions should matter a little more to the site owners. But complaining in the comments section just seems like you are doing exactly what you are complaining about; i.e., the negative comments/compaints aren’t “OSNEWS Material”
“All complainers: you could create your own website and reports about operating systems if you disagree with the content here. You don’t have to come here if the site isn’t what you are wanting to read. ”
99% is stuff i want to read and I hope OSNEWS appreciates that I take time out to hit their site… And I certainly hope they take it as constructive criticism when I complain about a article that I (as a loyal reader) do not feel like it should be on OSNEWS. I know in my business I value my customers opinions, and I actually value the criticisms even more because if one person is willing to mention something they think should be changed then I KNOW there are ten others that think the same thing but wont mention it….
I mean this is a public site, and as such you are going to get some very ‘drive-by’ comments and I think Eugenia as well as the others should just take a ‘oh well’ kind of approach. I think E let it get to her! All the zealotry and so forth… I am not a zealot but I love to argue like one simply because it is….fun, well I wouldnt say fun but it reinforces your beliefs, or it knocks your beliefs for a loop and you have to realize someone else has a point… But it is all in good fun, I realize some people take it to far but that is ok as well, just another drive-by and we can all get back to our poking and jabbing…
If they didnt want comments then why have a “post comment” section…because that is what makes it so fun and interesting… What are you suppose to post when the article is “OE has another hole”… I mean look at most of the headlines, the vast majority are flame worthy topics, argumentative, one-sided, type stuff OR they are the type that should not have any comments whatsoever simply because it is a interview or something and there isnt much to discuss. You could discuss some of the points he brought up but thats about it… One type of article that DOES manage to get some intelligent posts are the “how-to” kind of articles, with people talking about how they prefer this or that, and how they think it should be done, and so forth, I even chimed in on the partitioning one. Yes, some of the posts were still mean spirited but I honestly think they had a point when they said obviously the person hadnt used other filesystems. But all in all the posts were good and discussed not having swap if you have lots of memory and somoene else pointed out that
I mean the posts on this thread here is proof… this story doesnt belong, it is too far out there, no one is really interested in debating how a roomba could be useful or how technology it uses is interesting…
my ideas to “calm” osnews a bit – require registration, auto profanity filter, more ‘tech’ , ‘how-to’, ‘problem discussing’ threads and less flame worthy topics….how about a topic like “dbus – good or bad” or “best applications to use for a underpwoered system” or “how-to: setup file sharing on any linux by editing samba conf file”…. just plain, how-tos, whats wrong with xyz, whats right with xyz, etc…. still argumentative but hopefully more constructive… heck i dont know
maybe i should start my own site… 
but see, we had a good constructive discussion becuase we had a debatable subject and not just a flame worthy one…
i am looking for a job if anyone is interested
souneedalink (at) yahoo