Marius Kintel <kintel@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=Createtes... - http://createforums.irobot.com/irobotcreate/board/message?board.id=Create_Su... - 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