Rosie the Android

Rosie the Android was created for Women Techmakers event at Grace Hopper 2017 to show up the exciting stuff you can do with Android Things!

The goal of the project was to provide an interactive experience for the audience by inspiring innovation similarly to Rosie's namesake: Rosie the Riveter. We initially discussed using a well known robotic animated character, however we decided to instead focus on the Android design many are also aware of today.

The first version of Rosie the Android was approximately four (4) foot tall and combined functional components such as motorized movement and arm articulation, as well as sensors which can detect when a person is standing nearby and take a picture.

The exterior body used for Rosie v1 included:

• Storform arms and head

• Trash can body

• Sanding materials (i.e. sand paper, rotating tool)

• Primer

• Acrylic paint and paint brushes for the details

• Tape

• Clothing fabric

The internal hardware and sensors used to power Rosie included:

• [TBD]

The chassiss, wheels, and display modules used for Rosie the Android v1 were all connected to and powered by Android Things boards. All of the code was written in Java for the Android operating system.

Since version 1 of Rosie she has evolved to a completely fabricated girl using the Android Things platform to steer around a fully fabricated Rosie the Android which has been displayed at Google I/O 2018 and multiple Women Techmakers events in the last several months.

Rosie v1 was created by two (2) engineers over a four week period who had never worked on Android Things before, and stands as an example of how simple it is to get started with Android Things.