Personal Home Robot Lands Nerd $5,000 in iRobot Contest

It may look like a [Star Wars reference omitted] with a very erect [Star Wars reference omitted], but the Personal Home Robot is actually designed for use in this galaxy. Danh Trinh of Towson, Md. took home a $5,000 contest prize from iRobot for building the cute but boringly named PHR on the iRobot Create platform. Made up of parts from all over, it appears to contain a Compaq iPaq, a wireless access point from Buffalo and a Logitech QuickCam. It can water plants, control lights and appliances, play music and remind owners to take their medication. It does not [Star Wars reference omitted], but neither do you. [Instructables] More »

Clips: iRobot Create in Action

We first told you about iRobot's new Create robot yesterday, but now we have more. Basically this is a Roomba, minus all of the vacuuming utensils and adding a bunch of ports that allow the modders to go nuts. There was one functional unit at their booth, and it half-assed worked supposedly because it had been demo'd non-stop for the past couple days. But here is a video I nabbed of the Create doing a variety of tasks. –Travis Hudson

iRobot Launching an Edu-Bot?

iRobot is trying to expand their market beyond just mopping and vacuuming, with the iRobot Create. It's basically just the body of the Scooba without the brushes or cleaning fluid tank. Instead they tacked on some ports so people can mod the system to attach things like reticulating arms. More »