The iRobot Roomba is perhaps the best example of mobile robotics entering the home. It performs a useful task and is relatively inexpensive, and while it doesn’t look like Rosie the Robot on The Jetsons, it does have a charm of its own. The purpose of this book is to introduce robot hacking to people who are interested in programming and modifying their own robot but who don’t want to destroy a functioning Roomba. This “reversible hacking” is device modification that can be undone to return the device to its original state. In the case of the Roomba, the ROI connector is the gateway to reversible.
