Dyson 360 Eye Robot Vacuum has a 360-degree lens so it knows where it is located in a room and where it has already cleaned. The indoor navigation system uses a panoramic camera lens on top of the machine to map its way around the house.

So, now the question is that we can also build at home with less money a 360-degree vision system that can work outside in sunlight.

I search on the Internet and I found two solutions for DIY projects. A cheap one and an expensive one. The second solution is an Eye Mirror at a price of $453. So, it’s too expensive for me and probably for many other makers. Also, the price is miles away from the range of $100.

The cheapest solution is a Kogeto Panoramic Accessory for iPhone 4. It has a price of $14 on Amazon. And someone already uses it to build a 360 video camera system.

You can mount this panoramic lens on a 3d printed mount and connect it to a Raspberry Pi. The SimpleCV framework provides the algorithms to unwrap the frames and process the images.

For a good reason, the camera with the panoramic lens should be mounted on top of the robot.

Don’t expect to have high-quality 360-degree images with this panoramic lens, but at least you can try something new in robotics navigation for under $100.

What do you think? How big is the impact of sunlight on the images since the panoramic lens is aimed directly at the sun?