roomba

iRobot Roomba More...

iRobot Roomba

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" "ir:0" "opaque:0"]
  port "/dev/ttyS2"
  safe 1
  roomba500 false
)
Todo:

- Add support for IRs, vacuum motors, etc.

Author:
Brian Gerkey

Last updated 25 May 2011 21:17:00