Finally, Roombas enacting a game of Pac-Man

Devin Coldewey

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Yes. It is finished. We can shut down NASA, DARPA, all the arts and sciences, and stop trying now. The pinnacle of human achievement has been reached. Robot vacuums have been hacked to play the parts in a real-life game of Pac-Man.

The ghosts are actually moving autonomously along computer-defined lines (they can’t “see” the actual maze) and the Man of Pac himself is guided by an RC controller. I was a little disappointed to see that he doesn’t eat the dots, though.

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I won’t waste your time by summarizing all the hacks and modifications that went into this project; they’re well-documented here, and good reading too if you’re into that sort of thing.

[via Giz and En]

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