Just FYI, the Yujin Robot vacuum cleaner (http://www.iclebo.com/english/pro_plusa.html) is already doing visual mapping 
and might be in the same price range.

Cheers,
Radu.
--
http://pointclouds.org

On 12/04/2010 12:43 PM, Alex Bravo wrote:
>     We've thought about trying the Neato XV-11's instead -- they're more
>     expensive, but you get LIDAR.  However, they don't sell stripped down
>     units nor publish their documentation like iRobot does, so we're going
>     with the Creates for now.
>
> We are leaving in really exciting times. Just 3 months ago the most affordable alternative for running navigation stack
> with SLAM was iRobot with Hokuyo.  About $2,000 total.
> And now we have not one but two extra options:
> 1) Neato with their sensor $400.
> 2) iRobot + Kinect $300 - $400
> Another $300 for brain/mics and you have a sub-$1000 robot hardware.
> Add to this the great work all you guys were doing on the software side, and the advent of Personal robotics looks a lot
> closer.
> Alex Bravo
> P.S. It would be nice if Neato would release their specification too. Are you listening, Neato? :)