AW: [Metalab] Robotics

[Andreas.Trawoeger at wgkk.at]

Marius Kintel <kintel at sim.no> schrieb am 22.02.2007 11:07:19:
> > Have you looked into sensors/actuators the device comes with and what
> > you can add? It doesn't look very hackable to me concerning the 
> > hardware
> > but I may be wrong... I'd like to use a robot to be able to do the
> > robotchallenge courses, so I'd need some sensors to navigate on a line
> > and get around obstacles etc...
> >
> They say that it ships with 30 sensors, although I cannot easily find 
> a specification detailing these.
> Regarding hackable hardware - this might be a valid point; the iRobot 
> Create is "just" an automatic vacuum cleaner without a vacuum 
> cleaner, so it's definitely not designed for expansion.
> 
> Navigation on a line: They have some "cliff sensors" (IR sensors), 
> which might be able to distinguish between light & dark floor. I'm 
> not familiar with the rules of robotchallenge though..
> 
> If we can get our hands on a couple of those thingies, I'm certain 
> that we'll quite soon extablish the critical know-how in the lab.

The irobot.com site is lousy (finding things is difficult), but the irobot 
create documentation is pretty good:

- http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=294
- http://createforums.irobot.com/
- 
http://createforums.irobot.com/irobotcreate/board/message?board.id=Createtest1&message.id=6
- 
http://createforums.irobot.com/irobotcreate/board/message?board.id=Create_Support&message.id=3298
- http://roboticsprimer.sourceforge.net/workbook/Main_Page 

The irobot has somewhat limited capabilities, but combined with a gumstix 
it could be turned into a very capable piece of hardware. 


cu andreas