Background is that I'm a software engineer.
It runs on open source software OpenCat and can integrate with Pi or ROS.
Here's the review by MagPi in its Nov 2022 issue: https://images.ctfassets.net/2lpsze4g694w/2A12bpCahduZNgNQZv...
It supports ROS2, is relatively cheap and easy to her started with. You can layer build your own systems.
PS: If you can afford to spend like $5000 and want a quadraped like Spot, you can get one from Unitree. If you are looking for manipulators, you can get one from Elephant robotics for less than $1000. If you are looking for a more useful manipulator, I love Franka panda but it's like 20,000 USD.
The closest thing I’ve seen is Roborocks Socket API.
There's this https://github.com/Sollimann/CleanIt for iRobot or 'Valetudo' for Xiaomi, which may be at the very least hackable, if not have good APIs.
And there are of course projects to build your own https://github.com/awesome-vacuum/awesome-vacuum
Cool open-source hardware projects in awesome-vacuum though. I'd love to abstract away atleast the hardware vacuum parts if possible.
I collected info about the various protocols and interfacing options in 2013, in the course of making a Racket package for the Roomba and Create. https://www.neilvandyke.org/racket/roomba/
Although it's a robot, there's not much you can do with your code right now since the Skills SDK access has been heavily restricted.
Their tech blows my mind. They do all the navigation and motion planning based on just RGB cameras, running multiple neural networks in parallel on board the drone. All the depth estimation, including small obstacles likes leaves and power cables, they are doing it all onboard. I don't think anyone in industry come close to that.
I so regret missing interning with them when they were starting to grow in 2018 - they came to my University for recruiting and I was just starting my PhD and decided to not look for internships.
Check NVidia. I believe Jetson Nano can do stereo matching from multiple camera pairs in real time. From here one step to 3d points cloud. New Orin will have like 10x performance. Coming in January. So, it's within the reach. I'm thinking, have big stupid drones collecting the dust...
