Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Here's some more of my post-CES reportage from The Register - this time on the rather nifty Create robotics developer kit from the folk at iRobot. No need to hack your Roomba, just buy a Create for $129 and away you go...

One of the funnier sights at this year's CES was a video of a hamster ball. It wasn't any old rodent workout – this one was steering a robot. The hamster seemed to be having fun, and the developer was having a ball too...

Behind it all was iRobot's Create, which takes the familiar Roomba and Scooba cleaners, and turns their common hardware into the core of a robotics development kit. Unlike many other kits, Create is ready to go as soon as you take it out of the box, with the familiar trilobite shape of the Roomba. Instead of a vacuum cleaner, there's a spacious payload bay, with standard fittings so you can add your own hardware to your robot. A fourth, rear, wheel has been added to make sure your creations stay stable.

The basic Create platform comes with 10 built-in demo applications and 32 different sensors you can use in your applications. The basic Create uses iRobot's Open Interface language to build simple applications using the Create's own sensors and motors. Your instructions are assembled on the PC and loaded onto Create via USB.

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I suspect this is one for bugshaw, due to the hamster content...