On the weekend of March 2nd to March 4th, a Global Cloud Robotics Hackathon will be held in several cities around the world. This initiative is born in Montreal, Canada where the main event will be held but other cities are challenged to participate and to show off their robot hacking skills.

What is a “hackathon”?

The word “hackathon” is a combination of “hack” and “marathon” and designates an event where hackers, makers and tinkerers from teams and get together for a short time (a weekend for instance) to create and hack technology. The most hard-core hackers code and build during the entire event without sleeping and only taking minimal breaks.

What is this “cloud” thing?

“Cloud robotics” refers to the use of web services (that run on the internet, a.k.a. “the cloud”) in order to make robots smarter. This hackathon is focused in catalyzing the creation of cloud robotics applications by using the MyRobots.com API, Android, and ROS.

Why participate?

Many reasons: It is a fun opportunity to hack  and learn about cloud robotics, it brings roboticists to work with web developers and android programmers, and each team gets a FREE DFRobotShop Rover. If you want to be a hero in the robotics community and get started in the very exciting and emerging field of cloud robotics, register your team now! Find out more about the Cloud Robotics hackathon on roboticshackathon.com

The MyRobots.com App Store  is the first robot-specific App Store to list applications which are ready to buy! The first available applications are intended for use with the iRobot Roomba Vacuums, one of the most widely used robots in the world. All six million Roombas (estimated number of Roombas in the “wild”) can now benefit from these applications which are intended to make full use of the onboard sensors and commands to transform the little cleaning robot in to a telepresence solution. The Robot App Store is also open for roboticists and developers who would like create, submit and then sell their apps. Current apps are similar to the existing Android and iOS apps that need to be downloaded and installed into a device (a robot in this case). The MyRobots team is still working on creating and supporting apps that run in the cloud, but some hints on the site (such as the cloud icon in the top-right) lead to believe the functionality will be coming soon. The MyRobots App Store uses RobotShop’s e-commerce platform to handle transactions but it is foreseeable that in the future, transactions will go trough the MyRobots site, giving users a more seamless experience.

Today the MyRobots.com team added a countdown timer on their website signalling the imminent launch of their new Cloud Robotics service. After months of planning, design and implementation, the highly anticipated BETA launch of MyRobots.com is scheduled for December 20th 2011, 9AM (GMT-5). The BETA period will allow users free access to MyRobots.com for an undetermined amount of time so they can freely experiment and bring their robots to the cloud. Cloud robotics is a new and exciting filed and we are happy to enter in this new era of interconnected robots and the Internet of things. In order to keep up with their latest developments, visit MyRobots.com and follow @_myrobots

The Neato XV-11 has been hacked! Hooray!

Now, every hobbyist has access to a (relatively) cheap and fairly accurate LiDAR. This kind of technology usually sells for several thousands of dollar and now is available for the price of a robotic vacuum cleaner (and it includes the vacuum cleaner in the price )

Hash79 successfully hacked the Neato XV-11 by adapting the code produce by Xevel and chenglung and was able to get useful  readouts from the LiDAR. Kudos to you guys, we hope you enjoy your bounty and the free vacuum.

For those of you wanting to get your hands on the code and hack the XV-11, simply visit the gitHub project page.

Via RobotShop Blog.

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