Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect to See The World, Obey Your Commands | Hacker News Reader

Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect to See The World, Obey Your Commands

singularityhub.com

67 pointskkleiner20 comments

The article claims this is "the first iRobot to finally use SLAM".

See Gerkey's Create+Hokuyo SLAM HOWTO from March 2006, predating this "first" by 4.5 years.

http://www.ai.sri.com/~gerkey/roomba/index.html

Also, since the Create was designed and sold for exactly this kind of thing (it is a Roomba without the cleaning guts and with a published external control protocol), how is this a hack? Sigh.

To be clear, I'm pointing out only the sloppy "journalism".

The Kinect was slapped on there as a cheap new sensor for already existing SLAM* software. I'm sure the student would not claim novelty for that, and will be facepalming if he reads the linked article. This may be the first working Kinect-based SLAM system (outside Microsoft), a few hours before the next fifty instances. The gesture interpretation shown in the last few seconds is the novel contribution here.

iRobot Creates are used for SLAM every day in tens, maybe hundreds of labs around the world.

It's a shame that this AI-themed blog couldn't be a bit more careful about simple facts.

[*Simultaneous Localization and Mapping]

As a hack, it might not be as impressive as something Woz might have done "in the day". But something very important is happening. A pre-made vision system was bodged onto a pre-built robot chassis and used with already existing software. It was fast, cheap, and relatively easy.

The robot Altair is nearly upon us. The robot PC-XT is likely not far behind. The mother of all tech-bubbles will be right behind that.

Kinect has been out for less than two weeks! I can't wait to see what these hacks look like after a year. There's so much potential in using Kinect as a robot sensor package it's not even funny.

Why does it have a rangefinder? Isn't that essentially a sub-function of having a Kinect on board?

The Hokuyo device is a linear scanning laser rangefinder with much better accuracy and range than stereo camera + texture projector (like the Kinect) sensors are achieving. It costs around $2000. That device itself was a revolution when it was released since previously everyone used SICK LMS devices at $20,000 each. Now most labs and some undergrad programs can afford the Hokuyo. The Hokuyo is less accurate than the SICK, but it's good enough for many purposes and, hey, it's affordable. The Kinect gives relatively noisy and and low-resolution data, but it's another order of magnitude cheaper AND it's 3D. More choice for the well-off and a whole new world for those without big research grants.

Forgot to answer the question in my previous post. It probably has the laser scanner on board because it was already there before the Kinect was attached, used as the input to the SLAM system, and why bother to take it off? It gives better quality depth information (in 2D) so he may still need it.

Maybe this was obvious, but I would like to point out that I did call it (sort of): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1894708

I almost wonder if Kinect will be big like the Wii due to the impressive amount of hacking done with it's hardware much like the Wii had with it's Wiimote.

I don't think the causality (hacking->popularity) runs that way. If anything, I'd think it runs the other way (popularity of the Wii made the Wiimote available in every game store and cheap for hacking on.)

However, the popularity of the Wii would seem to have been due to it being novel and fun.

Next step is for someone to hook this to the top of their car and teach it to autopilot.

I doubt it, last time I checked the kinect had a very low range, below the 4m mark I think, If you stand too far away from the sensor the magic fades away.

A nearsighted self-driving car you say? Where's the harm in that? :)

infrared. This is why Grand Challenge cars used lasers, video, radar. No infrared, and ultrasound didn't succeed as well.

A driverless car is not exactly a new concept... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_car

Turning your own car into a driverless car for less than $200 would be quite novel. (I don’t think the Kinect is ideal or all that useful for this task, it would be very revolutionary if it were, though.)

Price is important. Price can be the only thing that’s different about something and it can still be revolutionary.

It doesn't have any arms - how is it going to hold a cellphone?

Here's the thing; this seems amazing. The big question is, what is the killer app?

I, for one, welcome our Robot overlords.

I, for one, welcome our new kinect powered robot overlords.

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