iRobot demos programmable robot at CES

iRobot Corp. provides aspiring roboticists, students and robot developers with an affordable, pre-assembled programmable robot—iRobot Create. The robot, which is being demonstrated at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, can pick up clutter and create designs on the floor.

"Innovators dream of creating useful robots, but they often get bogged down with designing a mobile platform that works," said Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman of iRobot. "iRobot Create fills a need in the robot industry for a standard, durable hardware platform on which to rapidly develop new, innovative mobile robots."

The Create platform provides access to robot sensors and actuators via an open interface. It also features standard connections for electronics and threaded mounting holes that allow users to secure their inventions to the robot, streamlining the integration of third-party electronics such as sensors, cameras, arms and wireless connections.

A slew of methods and programming languages can be used to control Create. Beginners can observe the robot's behavior in one of 10 demonstration modes or they can program the robot directly by downloading short scripts with any basic terminal program. More advanced users can write programs for completely autonomous robot behavior in C or C++ using the iRobot Command Module. Developers can also create custom software and interact with Create using a variety of methods including Microsoft Robotics Studio, a Windows-based development toolkit.

Create is based on the core technology of iRobot Roomba and is now available. Pricing starts at $129.99.