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Congratulations! It's a. . . WiMo!

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WiMo (The Windows Mobile Robot) has a couple of cousins! Some students and faculty over at the Auto ID lab at MIT have built a few WiMos to experiment in their RFID research. For more information on their project, you can check out their project web page at https://autoid.mit.edu/cs. In celebration of WiMo’s new cousins, I have started the community section of the www.wimobot.com website.

So, what else is new with WiMo since the last time I posted?

A new (well, this past December) Channel 9 video has been posted where I got a chance to give an in-depth demo of WiMo as well as talk a little about WiMo’s future. I show some new features since the last channel 9 video as well as a couple of the WiMo hardware platforms i'm working on (including a preview of Monster WiMo, the WiMo I am building using a 4x4 Monster R/C truck!). So, if you haven’t seen WiMo in action yet, I highly recommend that you check out the video.

I’ve updated the WiMo code (you can go download it now!). The new code now uses the RTM version of Microsoft’s Robotics Studio (MSRS)! WiMo now has a few MSRS service so that you can easily add a Windows Mobile device or WiMo entirely to any of your MSRS projects. This also works the other way around! Because MSRS comes with a bunch of services already implemented for you, it’s really easy to add them to your WiMo. For instance, with just a few drags and clicks in their Visual Programming Language, I was controlling WiMo using an XBOX 360 controller in just 10 minutes!

The new code also abstracts out the WiMo hardware as well as the microcontrollers. It is now much easier to add new microcontrollers and hardware platforms to WiMo so that a single binary can be used. You can even use your Windows Mobile device as a conduit to your microcontroller, allowing you to use any network accessible to your device as a "wire" to your microcontroller. Check out the class diagram for how the most significant WiMo APIs relate to each other. With every code update, I’ve also been updating the online documentation for the APIs.

What’s next?

As WiMo is approaching his first birthday (maybe I should throw him a party), I’m working on new WiMo designs and features. Aside from the 4x4 truck, I’m working on an IRobot Create version of WiMo (basically a Roomba without the vacuum guts) and a few other designs primarily to use more sensors. I’m also adding more Windows Mobile specific features to WiMo (the last update used SMS Interception to intercept SMS messages from MSN Instant Messenger, or another phone, as a way to communicate with WiMo. Check out the Channel 9 video for the demo.).

I’ll keep you up-to-date as I update the code and hardware. WiMo (and I) am also looking forward to meeting you all at MEDC 2007!

-- Brian
WiMo’s www: https://www.wimobot.com

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 05, 2007
    This is very cool. I had thought about doing something like this but had little idea where to start so this will be very cool. I'm particularly interested in how you reliably create Ad Hoc wifi connections between the pocket pc and the smartphone. The speech stuff is also very timely for me - i look forward to finding out more about that! I assume you are using some MS speech engine rather than a commercial one?! Great stuff - i'm off to read.

  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2007
    weblivz:  Glad you like the project, hopefully it will help you find that starting spot for your own project.   I'm actually not using Ad Hoc wifi.  I am using a standard wifi connection.  Because Wimo connects to an access point, in theory, you should be able to access the robot remotely. The speech engine is a prototype that i am playing with from within MS.  Unfortunately it is not available to the public at this time. Let me know if you ever start up your project. -Brian

  • Anonymous
    July 24, 2007
    I love the idea of the iRobot design.  I would be great if it could also work with a standard Roomba.  They also have a serial port and their are a lot of them out there.  Since they have a charging station you could get alot of functionality with minimal hardware.  Will this also work with the standard Roomba?  Also, can you skip the bluetooth interface and go serial-to-serial with an iPaq?