Roomba - vacuuming robots
Roomba is a low-cost robot produced by iRobot. It is intended to be a commercial cleaning robot, however with little to no modification it can become a powerful educational/hobbyist robotics platform.
Contents
Sensors & Actuators
The Roomba comes with these basic sensors:
- Four IR based cliff sensors
- Two bump sensors
- One wall sensor
- A top mounted IR sensor. Used by Virtual Walls, Docking Station, and Remote Control
- One Dirt Detector (acoustic impact). Some Roombas have two.
The Roomba is sold commercially as a mobile vacuum cleaner, thus it also has these actuators:
- Two wheels drive with differential drive
- One main brush motor
- A side brush motor
- A Vacuum motor.
Communication protocol
The Roomba proprietary Serial Command Interface is available here: iRobot Roomba Open Interface (OI) Specification.
Hacking the Roomba
To interface with the Roomba Serial Port you need a USB - Serial adapter (for 0-5V signals, NOT RS232 levels!). You can find the schematics and the PCB layout of such an adapter here: USB - Serial adapter (iRobot Roomba variant)
You can also find other schematics on net as well as ready to use cables: Roomba-serial, Roomba-USB or Roomba-bluetooth.
Schedule
If you need to move a Roomba from the lab, you should first ask to Andrea Bonarini, and then fill in the table below.
| ID | Test | Notes | Where/Who | Project |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | OK | AIRLab | ||
| #2 | OK | AIRLab | ||
| #3 | Collaudato (Matteo) | AIRLab | ||
| #4 | OK | + Batteria roomba #6 | Mohammed Ali | |
| #5 | KO (bumper) | AIRLab | ||
| #6 | KO (bumper) | AIRLab | ||
| #7 | KO (alimentazione) | AIRLab | ||
| #8 | Collaudato (Simone) | AIRLab | ||
| #9 | Collaudato (Martino) | White recharger borrowed | AIRLab |
See also
Roomba project - A wall following application showing the functioning of Roomba exploiting Pyro software interface.
