Roomba Pac-Man: Classic game gets robot twist
(Credit:
Roomba Pac-Man)
Students at Colorado University have reprogrammed five Roomba vacuum-cleaning robots to recreate the classic 1980s arcade game Pac-Man.
The machines move around a virtual maze, indicated by red tape on the floor, as the four ghosts Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde chase the Pac-Man Roomba as it vacuums up paper dots.
The Pac-Man Roomba is joystick-controlled by a user, but the ghosts navigate autonomously. They will try to chase Pac-Man until it sucks up a power pellet, which puts them into evade mode.
The Roombas are wirelessly linked to a laptop that processes their locations through an overhead camera positioning system.
The developers created Roomba Pac-Man to demonstrate their unmanned aerial guidance system software.
But this isn't the first time Roomba has been reprogrammed to recreate a game from yesteryear. The plucky puck-shaped robot has dodged Texas cars while reliving the adventures of Frogger.
Crave freelancer Tim Hornyak is the author of "Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots." He has been writing about Japanese culture and technology for a decade. E-mail Tim. 
