Roomba smeared entire floor with dog poop

Re:Roomba smeared entire floor with dog poop by greenyoda on Sunday January 05, 2020 @05:49PM (#21964748)

I wonder what it would take for a Roomba to detect such a condition and automatically avoid it. Some ideas:

- An internal sensor (photodiode) that would stop the Roomba if it got covered with some foreign material that interrupted a light source.

- A rear-facing camera that could detect if the Roomba was creating a trail of something behind it and stop the device. (Might not work very well on striped or patterned carpeting.)

- A forward-facing sensor that could detect objects such as dog poop in its path and initiate evasive action.

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Re:Roomba smeared entire floor with dog poop by peglasaurus on Sunday January 05, 2020 @07:10PM (#21965283)

- Skid detection

- maybe early versions have dog/cat mode so the roomba is primed to expect this

- odor detection. Volatile gases.

I'd suggest color / visual but I'm not sure of the roomba's visual system or processing capability. I'm guessing not enough to run opencv or equivalent.

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