Create: Designing Your Own Robotic Apps

Okay, maybe this post belongs in the Embedded Systems or AI department. Still, you have to design and write applications for it. What I'm talking about is Create, a new mobile robot from iRobot.

iRobot, you recall, is the company that builds and sells the Scooba, Roomba, and Dirt Dog, robots that vacuum and scrub the floor for you.

Create is a different sort of beast, however. It is billed as an "affordable, programmable robot designed for aspiring roboticists, advanced high-school and college students, and serious robot developers." Create comes pre-assembled, so you can design new robots without having to build a mobile robot from scratch. And pricing starts at $129.99.

A variety of methods and programming languages can be used to control Create. You can watch the robot’s behavior in one of 10 demonstration modes, or they can program the robot directly by downloading short scripts with any basic terminal program. You can also can write programs for completely autonomous robot behavior in C/C++ using the iRobot Command Module. Furthermore, you can also create custom software and interact with Create using a Microsoft Robotics Studio, a Windows-based toolkit.

I recently had a chance to talk with Colin Angle, the co-founder of iRobot about Create and other topics. A fascinating chat about what looks to be a really fun device.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:33 AM  Permalink