Maid to Order - A little robot called Roomba vacuums your house while you lounge by the pool. Is this the beginning of the end?
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Computer Science Design Electrical Engineering Entrepreneurship and Innovation Mechanical Engineering |
| Special Topic(s): |
History of Technology |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Reference - Article/Document |
| Media Type: |
Document |
| Author(s): |
Lev Grossman |
| Description: | Time article, September 14, 2002. The article has links to a video of the cleaner allow with a pop-up graphic that describes how each component works. Excerpt: "The first time you meet a robot can be pretty disappointing. Hollywood has taught us what to expect: a trusty sidekick like R2-D2, a gleaming robo-maid like The Jetsons' Rosey or a cyberassassin like the Terminator. The reality is very different: most robots are either mindless factory drones or blue-sky academic projects that cost a fortune, break down a lot and don't do very much. Most of them don't even have death rays. Now meet Roomba, a new housecleaning robot spawned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Lab and built by a Somerville, Mass., company called iRobot. Roomba's function is a humble one: it's designed to vacuum your living room while you're otherwise engaged. But Roomba also represents a technological watershed: it's the first robot ever built that is designed to live in your home, serve a useful purpose and be priced for the mass market - at $199, it costs about the same as a mid-range vacuum cleaner. Roomba isn't quite Rosey the Robot, but it just might be Rosey's great-great-grandparent. Roomba had three parents: Rodney Brooks, director of M.I.T.'s AI Lab, and two of his former graduate students, Colin Angle and Helen Greiner. Brooks, who was featured in the 1997 documentary Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, is arguably the world's greatest living roboticist. A voluble Australian, he's famous for finding radical, counterintuitive approaches to intractable problems; the nasa rover that went to Mars aboard Pathfinder was designed using techniques he pioneered." |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | vacuum cleaner design Rodney Brooks Colin Angle Helen Greiner |
| Usage Tip | |
| Use of Resource: |
Great case study in innovation and women entrepreneurs. |
| Interactivity Level: |
Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | February 2008 |
| Platform/Format: |
Unknown |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ve |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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