2. Playing Robot

Since they first released the Roomba six years ago, iRobot has sold more than two million of the robotic vacuum cleaners that move around our living rooms like giant Frisbees turned faceless pets. Useful, affordable, and inexplicably endearing, Roombas have been tempting domestic bots for alteration from the start.

Things got even easier for would-be hackers after October 2005, when iRobot started shipping Roombas with open interfaces that allowed users to modify the behavior of their bots directly, something called “reversible hacking.” They also released iRobot Create, which looks like a Roomba but is completely programmable. “We’re happy to see that people are finding new ways to utilize our robot platforms,” says the hack-friendly company, whose official statement indicates that it hopes to “facilitate the development of new robots”. Their message is simple: get hacking!

Plenty of people are doing just that. Tod Kurt, the author of Hacking Roomba—which is both a blog and a book dedicated to the subject—first started poking around inside iRobot’s vacuums as a way to prototype ideas for his robotics studio. “Needless to say, it started a whole lot of Roomba hacking on my part,” says Kurt, who’s performed and written about nearly dozen mods over the last three years.

A hacker since the age of twelve, Kurt was understandably excited when iRobot released the Roomba’s programmable interface. “This is important,” he announced on his blog. “It enables those who want to play ‘robot’ with their Roomba but who lack the time, skills, or desire to void their warranty.”

Kurt himself didn’t waste any time before “playing robot”—here are some of the hacks he put together.