roomba
[Drivers]

Newer versions of the iRobot Roomba vaccum robot can be controlled by an external computer over a serial line. This driver supports control of these robots.

Note that the serial port on top of the Roomba operates at 5V, not the RS232 standard of 12V. This means that you cannot just plug a plain old serial cable between the Roomba and your PC's serial port. You need to put a level-shifter in between them. Or you if have a computer that exposes serial lines at "logic level," (e.g., the Gumstix), you can use them directly. Check out iRobot's hacker site for more information, including the pinout on the Roomba's serial port. The Roomba Wiki has a howto on building an appropriate serial cable.

Compile-time dependencies

Provides
The roomba driver provides the following device interfaces:

Supported configuration requests

Configuration file options

Example
driver
(
  name "roomba"
  provides ["position2d:0" "power:0" "bumper:0"]
  port "/dev/ttyS2"
  safe 1
)

Todo:
  • Add support for IRs, vacuum motors, etc.
  • Recover from a cliff/wheeldrop sensor being triggered in safe mode; the robot goes into passive mode when this happens, which right now requires Player to be restarted
Author:
Brian Gerkey


Last updated 12 September 2005 21:38:45