Hi everyone!

Here at the lab we use mostly the Roombas. Thanks to Eitan we
now successfully run our Roombas with the navigation stack using a Hokuyo
laser for obstacle detection.

However the Roombas come equipped with many cool sensors. I was wondering if
it would be possible to use the Roomba as is, to run a simplified version of
the navigation stack. My idea was to publish the IR data as a point cloud
and feed the information into move_base running solely on a local dynamic
map, so no map server or amcl. The performance wouldn't be great for sure,
but maybe the Roomba would be able to move around without crashing.

What are your thoughts on that? Is it even worth a try or is it just idiotic
( the IR sensors have a range of about 20cm :P )?

Thanks for your thoughts in advance,

Gonçalo Cabrita
ISR University of Coimbra
Portugal