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From the page: "Roomba Pac-Man?

The vacuum, long an instrument for chasing cats, has now been turned against its own. What better use for automatic home appliances than to have them chase each other in classic video game style?

Built using our spare time, Roomba Pac-Man is designed to showcase the extensive Unmanned Aerial System software suite that we have developed to support our personal research. It was also a great opportunity to use some of our skills for our own entertainment. Check out the sections above to learn about the engineering that went into the complicated system which enabled the creation of this game.

As a disclaimer, our research center, RECUV, is not affiliated with the project, and the work done here, while utilizing some software we were paid to develop at CU, is the sole creation of those listed at the bottom of the page.

Are Roombas Dangerous?

No. Despite the fact that these little guys have tried to kill Pac-Man time and time again, they are instilled with the three laws of Roombotics.

Contact Information

Jack Elston AKA "Blinky" elstonj@gmail.com
o Website designer
o Created the diagrams for this site
o Ported Gentoo to the Alix, Gumstix Verdex, and several Soekris platforms
o Created the service discovery protocol
o Created the application layer networking architecture
o Roomba Pac-Man game design
o Modified the 3d models for the Google Earth visualization
o Created the 3d intro for the videos
o Significant work on the graphical user interface
Cory Dixon AKA "Inky" uavnut@gmail.com
o Created the graphical user interface
o Created the camera interface and display
o Significant work on application layer networking
o Significant work on service discovery protocol
o Created the 3d models in Solidworks
Maciej Stachura AKA "Clyde" mzstachura@gmail.com
o Created interface to the Hagisonic Stargazer
o Created unscented Kalman fitler for navigation
o Created joystick interface for controlling the Roombas
Chris Eheim * AKA "Pinky"
o Original creator of several libraries used in this project
Rob Witoff * AKA "Pac-Man"
o Modified code for camera interface "

From the page: "This is a video of Roomba Pac-Man in action. A few clarifications:

* The red tape on the floor is simply so the user can visualize the map in the real world. The robots are unaware of the tape, and are rather constrained by a virtual boundary embedded in their programming.
* The "dots" on the floor are pieces of paper the the Pac-Man Roomba must vacuum up to complete the map.
* The ghosts actually autonomously search for Pac-Man, and when they get close enough to "sense" Pac-Man, chase him according to a set of probabalistic rules.
* The human controller cannot force the Pac-Man to cross any boundaries, it will only allow inputs in valid directions.

For more in depth information check out the "hardware" and "software" sections. "

From the page: "I recently came across a site that featured a copy of an 8th grade US Constitution test, to which I'll link later in this post. I thought it would be interesting to link to some online quizzes concerning the modern-day equivalents, to see how you would do today.

Here are your challenges:
• Can you name all 15 US Presidential Cabinet positions?
• Can you name the people who currently hold the US Presidential Cabinet positions?
• Identify all 27 US Constitutional Amendments.
• Legislative branch of the US Federal Government questions
• Executive and Judicial branches of the US Federal Government questions
• Complete the Preamble of the US Constitution.

How did you do? You should have at least breezed through the Preamble and Constitutional Amendment sections if you practiced the mnemonics from my US Constitutional Amendment Mnemonics posts (Part I, Part II, Part III).

Here's the post that inspired this post, with the quiz from 1954. The student who took this quiz got a score of 98.5%. How did you do on your test?"