Electronics & Computers Deals here!March 15, 2006 10:01 AM PST
Roomba takes Frogger to the asphalt jungle
- Related Stories
-
Photo galleries: Robots in action
March 16, 2007 -
Tech invades South by Southwest confab
March 15, 2006 -
Craigslist, Wikipedia founders chat at SXSW
March 13, 2006 -
Techies get set for Austin's South by Southwest
March 10, 2006 -
FAQ: Keeping pace with robots
October 5, 2005 -
Can Roomba maker iRobot clean up on Wall Street?
July 27, 2005
On the other hand, I am hoping--as are 15 or so other people standing nearby--that one of the cars that keep rushing by will crush the tricked-out Roomba robot vacuum cleaner that Make Magazine associate editor Phillip Torrone and Eyebeam R&D fellow Limor Fried are sending back and forth across the street and through traffic.
This is Roomba Frogger, a modern, geek version of the famous 1981 video game "Frogger," in which players had to get a frog across a street without it getting crushed by a car or truck.
But here, in front of one of Austin's 19th-century landmarks, the gorgeous Driskill hotel, Torrone and Fried and a growing crowd have already gotten their Roomba, dressed in a cut-up green T-shirt to look like a frog, across the street several times without serious incident. Now everyone is cheering for imminent impact.
This is Make Magazine--a quarterly journal that pays homage to do-it-yourself technology hacks--come to life. Torrone and Fried have taken a production Roomba, an autonomous robot vacuum cleaner from iRobot, and modded it so that it is Bluetooth-enabled and controllable from a laptop computer.
Vacuum cleaner as game celebrity
About an hour and 40 minutes earlier, Torrone had showed up in Second Life Herald founder Peter Ludlow's suite at the Driskill, Roomba in hand. Everyone was in town for the South by Southwest conference here, and many had come from the party commemorating the closing of the conference's five-day Interactive event.
As Torrone and Fried begin setting up the Roomba--attaching Styrofoam cups to serve as legs and wrapping it in a frog-green T-shirt--everyone jokes about what will happen once it is sent into traffic.
"If the (Bluetooth) range works out," Torrone said, "we'll take turns running it until it dies, the cops show up, or both."
Around the suite, the declaration "Oh, this is going to be great" is heard again and again.
Just days ago, Torrone had hosted what he called the "first-ever underground Roomba cockfighting tournament" during the ETech conference in San Diego and had had hundreds of people furiously betting money on the outcome of the two-Roomba battle.
And on Monday night, he and Fried had brought a Roomba to a SXSW party and played Roomba pool, pitting the robot against people to see whether man or machine could sink more balls faster.
Now, they asked themselves, what could they do next?
"I said, you know what we can do? We can do real-life Frogger," said Torrone.
"I was like, this is a really bad idea," said Fried. "Let's do that!"
For a while the two huddle in a corner of the suite, tinkering with the Roomba and getting it ready. Soon, as the rest of the group gathers around, the robot suddenly emerges in the middle of the room, spinning in circles.
Things are looking good.
"Get pictures of it now because it's not going to look like this" for long, said Kyle Machulis, an expert in "teledildonics"--sex toys that are controlled remotely via the Internet.
See more CNET content tagged:
iRobot Roomba,
iRobot Corp.,
Austin,
robot,
street
allow this to be done safely. I know that someone is going to
say, "listen to this dork". But think about this for a minute, I
mean seriously think about this. A mother is driving down the
street, with a kid in the back seat. All of a sudden something
darts out in front of her vehicle. A lot of people's first reaction
would be to either slam on the brakes or swarve to miss it. The
mother than, trying to miss the animal or thing that ran out in
front her swarves and hits a nother car and the mother and child
are seriously injured. SHAME on the cops that saw it and didn't
stop it. Personally, if I were a driver that had damage done
because of this, I would sue the hell out of everyone that was
there, and the town and Police Dept. And, yes such a lawsuit
could and have happened.
The game has potential, but it needs to be safe! Lets see if we
can figure out a way to make it so. What would be fun is doing
it on a NASCAR track. I bet if you were to set this up right, you
could get a big game set up at Disney's race track in Orlando.
Just an idea, KEEP IT SAFE!
They took a vacuum cleaner across the road dressed as a frog. Good job. Idiots.
for the damage to the vehicles when they roll over this roomba.
i am thinking from a nice vehicle stand point, having the innards
of this vacuum cleaner throwin under the car and scraching
paint, popping tires, etc. someone can get hurt also if people
start swerving around and hitting things.
funny idea, dangerous consequences. if i ran over this in my
car, someone would be hiding behind a locked door because
they would be about an inch from their life ..:)
stop and beat them with a bat and steal their car.
Thats a real video game.
- Silly novelty that will wear off. Cellphones have nothing on Roomba
-
by Blito
March 20, 2006 12:17 PM PST
- OK great so now we take an already useless
-
Reply to this comment
-
-
See all 22 Comments >>Roomba novelty and now start to kill
people with it even before it starts to do
it on it's own. Fetish Mongers.
Robots are only good for science, assembly
plants and video games.
Maybe it could be good to have a fullscale robot
walk around with us maybe only for dangerous
settings.