Hobby roboticists now have a serious problem: which awesome off the shelf sensor do they use for 3D mapping, Kinect’s stereo camera system, or Neato’s LIDAR system, which has just been hacked wide open. Posting on RobotBox (presumably because of the sweet bounty that they threw down), Hash79 has provided video showing the raw distance output from a Neato XV-11′s LIDAR sensor:

The next step is for smart people to plug this hack into a module that the rest of us (who aren’t quite so smart) can readily access, like ROS. The step after that is to figure out how to find a Neato sensor without having to buy the entire robot. And the step after that is to go crazy and maybe speed up the motor and mount the sensor on a servo that scans up and down to get a whole 3D scene and damn this is going to be awesome!

VIA [ RobotBox ]

William Cox and his new robot community project site RobotBox (which is now fully armed and operational, by the way) are sponsoring a cash prize for anyone who can reverse engineer the sexy laser sensor in the Neato XV-11. The prize started out at $200, but has now doubled, thanks to some generous donations from Matt Trossen and another forum member at the Trossen Robotics community.

All you have to do to claim the prize is get the sensor to output useful 360 degree distance data and release your source code under an open source license. Easy! And it might actually be easy… The sensor is reputed to be hackable without too much trouble, someone just needs to make it happen.

[ RobotBox ]

This is a set of all of the different long exposure pics that I’ve taken while doing reviews of cleaning robots. I spent a likely excessive amount of time reviewing each robot in detail (and you can read those reviews at the links below), but really, the pictures explain the cleaning patterns better than I ever could. It’s illuminating (so to speak) to see them all right up against one another, so here they are:

iRobot Roomba 560, 45 minutes

Neato Robotics XV-11, 12 minutes

Evolution Robotics Mint (Sweeping Mode), 15 minutes

Evolution Robotics Mint (Mopping Mode), 23 minutes

Three very different robots, three very different cleaning techniques. Check out the individual reviews for more details on each.

[ iRobot ]
[ Neato Robotics ]
[ Evolution Robotics ]

A bunch of you have been wondering what the deal is with the Neato XV-11 robot vacuum, since it was a month ago that Neato said they’d started shipping their pre-orders. We got in touch with Neato, and they’ve confirmed that the robots are shipping to people who placed a pre-order. If they seem to be moving kinda slowly getting the bots in the mail, it’s for a good reason: they’ve had an “overwhelming response” to the pre-orders that “exceeded expectations” and they’ve run into a bit of a backlog. Neato says that they should be caught up before the end of August. If you want one, it’s worth noting that they won’t bill your credit card until the robot actually ships.

Anybody get theirs yet? Please post if/when you do!

[ Neato Robotics XV-11 ]

Despite several months worth of pestering, Neato Robotics wouldn’t give us a ship date on the XV-11 robot vacuum that was any more specific than “Summer 2010,” to the point where (if you’re jaded like me) it sort of seemed like we’d never actually see a commercially available product, despite the pre-orders and demo units and stuff. But, Neato has certainly held up their end of the bargain, and if you took the plunge and pre-ordered an XV-11, Neato says it’ll be shipping this week. Yay!

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 28 /PRNewswire/ — Neato Robotics™, a Silicon Valley startup pioneering new products to free people from household chores, today announced it will begin shipping its first Neato XV-11™ home robot vacuum cleaners to consumers beginning this week. Based on advanced technologies, Neato Robotics engineers have created a simply smarter robot that thoroughly cleans an area without you needing to be home. Customers who pre-order the highly-anticipated Neato XV-11 at neatorobotics.com will begin receiving them in early July, and additional units will be available for purchase via retail and online partners beginning in mid-July.

The suggested manufacturer’s retail price is $399. The Neato XV-11 includes a 30-day money back guarantee and a one-year limited hardware warranty. In addition to ordering on the Neato Robotics website, the Neato XV-11 will be available for pre-order via retail and online channel partners such as Amazon.com, Hammacher Schlemmer, SharperImage.com and Robotshop.com on July 15 with shipments of new customer orders beginning in August 2010. Additional channel partners will be announced soon.

Also, for those of you who like numbers, this was included as a footnote on the press release:

Based on internal testing, the Neato XV-11′s blower has a flow of 46 cubic feet of air per minute (or 1.3 cubic meters of airflow per minute), which is approximately five times stronger than the closest competitor. It has a vacuum suction of 100 mm of water (mmAq), which is approximately four times stronger than the closest competitor. The combination of this strong suction power with the linear speed of the Neato XV-11 at 24 cm/s creates unprecedented cleaning performance for a robotic vacuum cleaner.

Read our review of the Neato XV-11 here, and our comparison with the iRobot Roomba 560 here.

[ Press Release ]
[ Neato Robotics ]

Now that we’ve reviewed both the iRobot Roomba 560 and the Neato XV-11, you’re probably wondering which one you should get. There’s no easy answer, but in this post we’ll highlight the features of each robot and the differences between them, so that you can decide which one is right for you.

If you haven’t read our individual reviews of each robot, you can get lots more detail at the following links:

BotJunkie Review: Neato Robotics XV-11
BotJunkie Review: iRobot Roomba 560

And, there will be jousting, after the jump. (Read more…)

When we posted our reviews of the Neato XV-11 and iRobot Roomba 560 robot vacuums, you had some questions. Well, Neato and iRobot have some answers. We also gave Neato the chance to respond to our iRobot interview… We’ve got it all for you, after the jump. (Read more…)

If you weren’t sure just how cool the laser sensor on the Neato XV-11 is, this video should set you straight: it’s how the XV-11′s SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) system sees the room that it’s vacuuming. Coolest part? Spot person following the robot around… You can see their feet moving.

So, yeah, I definitely want one of those, especially since the sensor hardware costs only about $25.

And the vacuum is pretty damn good too.

VIA [ Singularity Hub ]

We’re putting together a head-to-head comparison of the iRobot Roomba 560 and the Neato XV-11, but before we put the issue to rest, is there anything else you’d like to know? Maybe something that we didn’t cover to your satisfaction in our reviews? We’ve had additional questions about energy consumption, noise levels, and robot height, but now’s the time to let us know if there’s anything else we missed, since we’ve got people at iRobot and Neato who are ready, willing, and able to answer any and all of your questions. Maybe you’re wondering why the Roomba is round, or what happened to the XV-1 through XV-10.

Or maybe you’re wondering which robot is better at jousting.

Yes, we made them joust.

So, if you’ve got any more questions, leave them in the comments and we’ll get them answered, and we’ll have the ultimate comparison post (with jousting!) up in the next few days.

The Neato Robotics XV-11 robot vacuum made its first appearance in December of last year, and we got a brief hands-on with it the following January at CES. Like the iRobot Roomba, the XV-11 is an autonomous robotic vacuum. Unlike the Roomba, the XV-11 maps the room it’s cleaning and follows an efficient pattern to minimize cleaning time. Neato says that the XV-11 is smart, fast, and powerful, and they lent us a unit for a day to test out… How’d it fare? We’ll show you, with lots of pics and a video, after the jump. (Read more…)