DIY Robot Revolution: Transforming an Old Roomba into a Smart Autonomous System

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This blog post introduces an exciting DIY project that transforms an outdated Roomba 581 vacuum robot into a modern autonomous system. The upgrade involves replacing the original control unit with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W running Ubuntu Linux, adding sophisticated sensors including a YDLiDAR X4 scanner, MPU6050 IMU, and HMC5883L magnetometer. The project leverages ROS (Robot Operating System) for control and promises to cover various aspects from system architecture to navigation implementation across a series of detailed technical posts.

2 Minutes reading time

Roomba ,Robot ,DIY

Behold the masterpiece that AI hallucinated while reading this post:

"The Little Robot That Could: A Story of Second Chances"

(after I fed it way too many marketing blogs and memes)

Created using DALL-E 3

AI-Generated: The Little Robot That Could: A Story of Second Chances

Maybe too much time

I found an outdated Roomba 581 vacuum robot in the attic. I just couldn’t throw it away, so I decided to pimp it a little.

A new hobby project was born!

Prototype: 300Release version: 300

After all, the Roomba hardware is a good vacuum, and it offers a serial interface to read sensors and control the actuators. Only the robot brain and navigation systems are really outdated. I decided to give it a new brain with better navigation hardware, and reuse the Roomba platform as a whole. Here are the ingredients:

  • Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W as the new 64 bit brain running Ubuntu Linux

  • YDLiDAR X4 2D 360 degrees laser scanner

  • Small OLED display for better user interaction and feedback

  • MPU6050 6-DOF IMU to measure relative orientation, acceleration and velocity

  • HMC5883L magnetometer

  • Control software based on ROS (Robot Operating System)

What I am planning

There is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. After all the goal was to create a fully autonomous system, which is a quite complex task. So I am planning a series of postings here covering the following topics:

So stay tuned! I will link the posts here as soon as they are ready.

<<Pevious posting: Transform Legacy Swing Apps into Modern Web Applications with JetBrains Projector Next posting: Building a Smart Roomba: A Symphony of Hardware and ROS>>

Git revision: 2e692ad