Tsufai's Scrap-Built Floor Sweeper Is an Ultra-Low-Cost Minimum Viable Product Take on a Roomba
No electronics bar two motors and a battery: this scrap-built cleaning robot could hardly be simpler.
Anyone dismayed at the news that Roomba maker iRobot has entered into bankruptcy proceedings may be wondering about building their own robotic cleaning devices — and if you want something simple as a starting point, mononymous maker Tsufai has released designs for a floor-sweeper driven by nothing more than a battery and two motors.
"I designed this robot so you can easily build one with the parts at home," Tufai writes of the simple machine, which lacks any kind of controlling computer system. "It does a pretty good job wiping the floor and even turns when bumping walls, cleaning far beyond its weight class! I've seen ones that work with vibration or fans, but they don't work very well, this is better!"
A traditional robotic vacuum, as popularized by iRobot's oft-imitated Roomba family, is packed with sensors and computational power — cleaning every part of a room by carrying out simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) using cameras, lidar, and other inputs, while protecting itself from bumps and falls with impact sensors and cliff-edge sensors. Tsufai's take on the concept, though, relies on a more mechanical approach: the only electronics are a pair of DC motors linked to a battery.
"The parts needed are cheap parts that can often be scrapped out of old electronics or purchased online for dirt cheap. This build is really flexible on parts used; things can be changed out and will still work! I specifically avoided fancy parts to make this build accessible to more people," the maker explains. "The wall turning feature [is] simple, cut out a piece of the board into a rectangle slightly bigger than the box and spin it in the middle with the second gearmotor in the front. You can add things to the tip and rubberbands to improve grip. Make the direction it's gonna push off the wall the same direction as the yaw tendency of the robot."
Full details, for if you want to build your own floor-sweeper, are available on Instructables.