Gaaglebot Hacked Roomba Indexes Your House [Video]

Google's attempts to index the world are all well and good, but it still can't tell you – no matter what The Onion would have you believe – where things are in your house.  Some Swedish modders have attempted to fill that gap, however, with the Gaaglebot, a modified Roomba outfitted with a compact webserver and a webcam.  The idea is that the robot roams about your house, shooting photos of any text it finds and converting that into a searchable database.Video demo after the cut

So, if you're wondering where you left your favorite book or CD, you can query the Gaaglebot's server and – assuming it was able to spot it during its house-crawling – it'll tell you whereabouts that text was found.  The same principle should work for grocery labels or anything with text.

Of course, the robot is only as good as the text it can see, and so a low-level Roomba probably isn't the best bet for reading countertop ingredients or scanning the various bookshelves you have running floor to ceiling.  Lacking any sort of robot arm, meanwhile, means it can't turn objects for a better angle, either.  Still, throw in some image recognition (we're so fed up of putting our phones down somewhere and then forgetting where that was) and we'll take one.

[via BoingBoing]