Roomba the robot probably isn't what the kids will want, but you might. It's a little robot vacuum cleaner that autonomously rambles about the room cleaning things up. Instead of the 1000 watts of power the normal cat chaser (er, vacuum) uses Roomba gets by on 30. Roomba is rechargeable and powered by an 8 bit, 16mhz microprocessor.

Four infrared (IR) emitter-detector pairs provide "cliff detection," which tells the machine it's approaching the edge of a step or drop-off.

"Most of the intelligence is not in the navigation, but in the hazard response," Angle said. "Roomba has to ask: 'How do I know if I'm stuck? What do I do if I'm stuck? What are my strategies for getting unstuck?' "

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