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Welcome to our blog. As part of the course CIS 542: Embedded Systems Programming at the University of Pennsylvania our project group, consisting of Navin, Tim, Margarita and Philipp, will develop an Android application to remotely control a Roomba robot.

The idea is to attach a WiFi Dongle and a Kinect camera to a BeagleBoard which itself is connected to a Roomba robot. A program running on the BeagleBoard will take pictures captured from the Kinect and send them to a server. Using an Android application the user will be able to connect to the same server with his phone and receive these images from the server, so he can view the current position of the robot as captured by the Kinect on the screen of his phone. Furthermore the application will feature controls for the user to send direction commands by way of the same server to the BeagleBoard. A program running on the BeagleBoard will then interpret these commands and pass them on to the Roomba so it actually moves. It will also be possible to tilt the camera mounted on the Roomba remotely by issuing commands from the Android application.

Besides these core features we are also planning to record user input to the app to save movement patterns that were entered. Furthermore well try to employ the Roomba's front bump sensor to check for obstacles, the depth stream of the Kinect to avoid certain obstacles all together and the Roomba's wheel drop sensor to detect and avoid ledges.