Boomba is a Roomba with every upgrade imaginable

In the classic Ship of Theseus thought experiment, we’re led to wonder if a ship is still the same ship after all of its parts have been replaced. But we might need to rename that to the “Robot of Boomba,” after Lucas completely rebuilt a Roomba to serve as a robotics platform.

At one time, Boomba was just another Roomba robotic vacuum. But then Lucas removed almost all of the original components. At that point, all that was left was the original plastic base and the drive motors — everything else, down to the control board, was swapped out. Lucas even replaced the Roomba’s top with a custom aluminum plate suitable for mounting other parts.

The new Boomba’s primary controller is now an Arduino® UNO R4 WiFi and it turns those original motors through H-bridge drivers. Power comes from a custom battery pack consisting of 16 18650 lithium battery cells with an integrated battery management system (BMS). Additionally, there is a circuit breaker and fuse box for protection.

Building on that foundation, the Boomba as an array of ultrasonic sensors for collision avoidance, MOSFETs for power output control, and an OLED screen for status information. An MCP23017 expansion board increases the number of GPIO pins available to handle all of the hardware and the MOSFETs control high-power LED headlights.

As it stands, the Boomba can really only drive around and shine its headlights under remote control. But it has the potential to do so much more, as Lucas has laid the groundwork for all kinds of additional hardware and capability.

However, the question remains: is this even a Roomba at all in its current incarnation?

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