Followup: Athens bombing
As more details come out, it looks like I was spot-on last night in my analysis of the embassy bombing in Athens. Hot damn!
It turns out one of my coworkers used to work for Evolution Robotics, which made the ER1 I used in my robotics research a year and a half ago. It’s nice to know that he agrees with me that the ER1 could have been a great product except the basic software, power converter, and marketing department were crap (though apparently if we had sprung for the $1,000 software it would have worked better). Intriguingly, he also thinks that adding a laptop and camera to a Roomba is a good way to get a cheap robot, which is what Prof. Dodds is doing now (he was my robotics research prof). Nifty!
So does iRobot, it would seem.
Wow! That is neat!
The guys at one of the SUNYs use roombas as platforms for making their sensor networks dynamically reconfigurable. “Now we want to try this other topology. Roomba number 1, go there. Number 2, go there….” all from some computer nowhere near them.
That’s purty.
The really sweet thing: they’re about $100, each.
That’s about one three-hundreth of what most research robots cost.
If you buy them in bulk they’re $100 each; if you wanted just one robot, the Command Module and a couple sensors, they seem to be about $200. Still, that’s ridiculously cheap in the robotics world. If I didn’t have thick carpet (which apparently messes up their wheels, or something), I’d be tempted to get one; I imagine I would have much more fun with one of these than with a PS3.
macdaddyfrosh, didn’t you write a fellowship application about the sort of multi-agent mobile sensor networks that dhalps is describing? Great minds think alike!