One-eyed, One-armed Metal Rolling Roomba Robot

roomba_robot

[Erik] was looking for a sturdy robotics platform and was initially considering the iRobot Create, until he found that he could score a Roomba Discovery series for a fraction of the price. The Discovery includes a battery, which is missing from the iCreate, though it also has all of the standard vacuum bits included as well.

He immediately removed all of the vacuum parts once he got his hands on the Roomba, and began adding the support structure to house the rest of his robot’s components. The robot is controlled via a small laptop which sits on top of the Roomba’s base, and features a panning and telescoping webcam to provide feedback to the operator.

The robot has been under construction for a little over a year now, and has had a few upgrades over that time. The original laptop was swapped out for a newer dual-core model, and the webcam was upgraded to a model featuring motion tracking. The whole thing has been skinned in thin sheet metal for a sleek look, and he has added a servo-driven arm as well.

The project is not quite complete, and he hasn’t really stated what he plans on using the robot for, but it looks good so far – we can’t wait to see it when it’s finished.

11 thoughts on “One-eyed, One-armed Metal Rolling Roomba Robot

  1. Umm, why not a more cost-effective CPU solution? ARM boards are much better suited to the task. They’re smaller, more power efficient, powerful enough, cheaper….quieter (not a real issue, I know)

    Nice project, though!

  2. The reason that I didn’t go with an ARM board or another embedded solution, is that I wanted the dual cores so I could use Roborealm’s machine vision capabilities. Also the dual core laptop cost me like $150 and since it’s a laptop it already has an onboard battery and human interface which makes troubleshooting a breeze.

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