Make Your Own Home Bot With iRobot's New Robotics PlatformMake Your Own Home Bot With iRobot's New Robotics Platform

Picture this: It's the final quarter of a big playoff football game and you can't tear yourself away from the TV, but you have a terrible thirst for a beer or a soda. What can you do? You could send your iRobot Create bot to the refrigerator to open the door and fetch a can of the beverage of your choice. The robot might have to run interference around your Bionic Hamster, though.

Those are just two applications developed by employees of iRobot, which Monday introduced its programmable and inexpensive home robot platform called iRobot Create at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

"It's not a toy," said Helen Greiner, the firm's chairman, in an interview. "A lot of people have had a dream of making [a robot]. We've made this affordable."

The base platform starts at $129.99 and operates with popular operating systems like Windows Vista and XP, Linux, and the Mac OS. Advanced users can develop autonomous applications in C or C++ using an iRobot $59 Command Module.

"You have to either know how to program or want to learn how to program," said Greiner, who is a co-founder of the firm. "We think it will be a tool to teach high school kids to program. It's learning with creativity."

If Create looks somewhat familiar, that's because it's based on the core technology of iRobot's Roomba, the popular vacuum-cleaning robot introduced in 2005. Some 2 million Roombas have been sold, and a few users tinkered with the home vacuum after iRobot added a kit and ports to encourage the development of unique applications.

The Roomba vacuum motor, dustbin, and rotating brushes have been removed in the Create platform and 32 sensors, an open cargo bay, a 25-pin expansion port have been added. Users can add and mix-and-match sensors, grippers, wireless connections, digital cameras, computers, or other electronic devices. Windows XP is supported through a serial port and Create can operate with Microsoft's Robotics Studio development kit.

While trying to figure out what people might do with the iRobot Create, Greiner said the company decided to hold an internal contest among employees; she was surprised at the range of applications that were developed quickly and inexpensively. Particularly clever, she noted, was the iRobot Create device that travels to a refrigerator, opens the door, and fetches a beverage can for its developer. Another application called the Bionic Hamster features a hamster with a mind of its own in a clear plastic sphere buzzing around the floor.

Soon iRobot Create bot were zapping each other while zooming around the firm's floor in games of laser tag. Another creation is a robotic bellhop that carries a user's baggage. A sophisticated application developed in the firm's Indian facilities features a system paired with an ink-jet printer that creates elaborate patterns on a floor and then cleans up the patterns later.