Could Your Next Robot be a DVD Player?

Posted 29 Jun 2005 at 15:06 UTC by The Swirling Brain

It looks like Java's virtual machine will be loaded into next-gen Blu-ray HD-DVD players. Of course the article itself doesn't talk about hacking it but just think of the hacking possibilities with this thing. I'm fortelling that when these get down to the $30 per DVD player price tag for standard DVD players of today that this new box will get hacked for everything. Just add a couple of wheels, sensors and your own DVD+RW program disk and you've got a robot! The article states that this box will likely have a network port on the back to allow for communication in and out of the box. I'm wondering, who will be the first? I'm predicting that having Java in a DVD player could lead to a lot of cool gadgets! No pun intended, but pause for a moment and savor the possibilities.

A Cheap and Versitile Computer, posted 29 Jun 2005 at 15:10 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

I'm thinking it's got video output, a remote input which may be nice to stand back and command your robot, it has network communication, it has HD-DVD disk data for the biggest program you can think of, all for some mass produced cheap price? Wow, this could be cool.

AI in Java, posted 29 Jun 2005 at 16:08 UTC by AI4U » (Observer)

We could do AI in Java.

Same thing I'm thinking about the Linksys WRT54GS, posted 29 Jun 2005 at 17:35 UTC by jeffkoenig » (Master)

It doesn't have Java, nor a CD ROM drive, but its code is open source Linux, and people have written new loads for it. I've seen hacks to add serial ports, extra memory, etc. to this nifty little wireless router. I bought one recently.

Having one of these as the basis of a small 'bot would be nifty (12VDC is all that is needed, and it sports a 400MHz processor) - it could connect wirelessly to a your big 'ole PC running the high-level stuff, taking commands from your keyboard or the 'net, house mapping, path planning etc.