Driving your Roomba around using your phone is so last month… Today the cool way to do it is by tilting your Apple MacBook. I wonder what Todd will come up with next?

“This project shows you how to use the built-in tilt sensors of the MacBook to control a Roomba. Since Perl hasn’t been used to program a Roomba yet, it seemed like a fun task to show that it could be done (and pretty easily too).

Apple MacBooks have integrated 3-axis accelerometer called the Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS, previously Apple Motion Sensor, AMS). Normally this is used to detect when the laptop is dropped so it can shut down the hard drive to prevent damage. But the SMS can be accessed programmatically and used to measure tilt.”