Anyone heard of the robomaid?

Paul Baker

http://www.robomaid.com/

Saw the ad for this tonight, its a pretty simple design. For $10 I'm thinking of getting one and seeing if I can hack it and put my own brains in it, maybe·radio unit·too.

Paul

Jon Williams

I've seen the annoying commercial.... When you tear it apart, please do share what you find inside.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Jon Williams
Applications Engineer, Parallax
Dallas, TX· USA

LoopyByteloose

It looks as though you pay $10 for the robot and then have to buy their cleaning pads forever (like the ink jet printer I have).

Of course if you just want to hack, it really is a heck of a bargain, but it doesn't automatically dock for recharge. I assume that it has no sense of home, just figures out how to keep randomly rolling.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
G. Herzog in Taiwan

Gadgetman

Have they upgraded it since they started selling it in Europe?

It's not very good at cleaning, and only changes direction when it bumps into something.
(That video does NOT show it in real operation)
Tests done here in Norway(Sorry, I don't remember by who) showed that unless the room was completely empty it'll leave large areas not cleaned.(The electrostatic charge only means it'll pick up loose dirt) The frame around the ball is also too light, so that it doesn't apply enough downforce to remove anyting but the loosest of the dirt.

Basically, it's a 'bump'n turn' child's toy withh a plastic frame around it...

Also, I know they sell them at a nearby store for NKr 160, about $20.

Paul Baker

Honestly I dont care about its intended app, I just want it for a nifty ball shaped robot that I can hopefully control by hacking it. I came up with the idea of a spherical robot many many years ago but couldn't grasp the mechanical/size issue (I think this was when I was in middle school when my idea of recreational reading was thumbing through the Radio Shack component catalog (this was more than a decade before WWW and the online retailers (I was in college when that happened and even then text only lynx was the name of the game, my words when I first saw WWW was "wow another gopher, just what we need", but I digress). My only idea at the time was to build a normal wheeled robot and put it in something like a hamster ball. But at the time micro-miniturization was in its infancy and only availible to industry and for megabucks.

Auto charge would be an issue, but you could put a metal plate sensor network on it, with a controller that senses·when its on the charge plate. Haven't really though of that issue, but it may be solvable.

Post Edited (Paul Baker) : 1/10/2005 8:56:22 PM GMT

Gadgetman

I guess the ball could be used, at least to see how they can be controlled...

I assume they use a heavy weight in it(possibly the batteries) to keep the innards oriented one way.

If so, to charge, attach a small coil at the bottom of that(so that it will be facind down at all times) and another coil in the charging location. Then just let it roll into place... No exposed electric contacts on either. (A big plus)

Don't want to make the coils?
Some electric toothbrushes already have this setup. Just break one open and you have all the parts you need...

LoopyByteloose

I suspect that you will find that its control system is NO CONTROL - just roll and bounce.

(It may have two motors - one for locomotion and one that spins a band that is parallel to the floor. The second one, the band, would torque the unit when it touches a surface and redirect its trajectory. No brains, all electro-mechanical.)

If so, there is really nothing to hack. You have an electric tennis ball, that's all. Heh, heh. . .

How would one ever get the thing to know where the charging station is?

Gadgetman's inductive recharger is very interesting though. I would love to hear more about that.
(I could put coils on the feet of my Toddler and have him do his own recharging.)

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
G. Herzog in Taiwan

Gadgetman

The inductive charger isn't a new idea, and if handled correctly, you can also use it for data transfers...

I have an old Seiko Data watch from 1984, and it uses induction to connect to the external keyboard...

One drawback with using induction to transfer power is that it is difficult to dump high currents through it(we're talking about an 'air-filled transformer' with a large gap between the primary and secondary coils). It may also cause problems with compasses and such...

I wonder... Doesn't those robot lawnmovers also use induction to recharge?

Paul Baker

Yeah, smart cards (I use 2 every day) use an inductive interface to both supply current to the microcontroller on the card and transmit data. Tesla was the first guy to come up with the idea of inductive power distribution, his idea was to use tall radio towers to blast high power radio waves as the backbone of the nation's power infrastructure. Some conspiricy minded people believe it was this idea that caused his downfall·causing him to spend his·last years·destitute and forgotten. (The theory goes that the titans of industry (Edison, Westinghouse, etc) saw wireless power distribution a unchargeable commodity (how can you know if someone is operating thier appliance off your emitted waves) and as such was a un-capitolistic and unamerican concept (back then capitolism didn't have a negative connotation, at least in urban America).

MacGeek117

Paul,
go to www.robotstore.com and check out the OctoBot surviver robot.
bugg

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
So many projects, so little time.