The official Android Developers YouTube channel has now published a new video featuring a robotic Android mascot named Rosie, meant to inspire more developers to get involved with the Android Things IoT platform. Although the robot only differs from the official mascot in terms of coloration, Rosie was actually a team effort between Google and Deep Local. First conceptualized at Google, the former company was later given the task of taking it from a prototype condition to the final product shown in the video. Of course, since this only appears meant to act as a reference point for other developers, it doesn’t do a whole lot aside from rolling around, taking pictures, and conducting very basic interactions. Despite its relatively rudimentary in its functionality, however, the company really just seems to have wanted to break ground with third-party developers in the promotion of its Android-based IoT platform and tools.
On that particular front, Google’s Rosie may be the perfect solution. For starters, the company’s prototype was built on a very simplistic platform. The team behind the robot started with a simple radio-controlled vehicle, wireless antenna, and foam for the body. For those who might be curious. The name of the robotic IoT selfie-shooter is drawn from World War II-era U.S. promotional posters intended to provide motivation from women working in jobs ordinarily occupied by men at the time. It was later handed off to Deep Local, who rebuilt the robot at a much larger scale and added photo printing capabilities, among other things. The hardware used for that is all off-the-shelf as well. Rosie utilizes electric wheelchair motors and two car batteries wired in series for power. A machine learning board was used inside to provide Rosie with the ability to use various sensors and the whole thing is built on Google’s Android Things API.
The Android Things API, meanwhile, was launched in version 1 back in may. That’s a code library which allows for on-device processing of exactly the types of code instances used in Rosie. It also allows for customization of exactly which portions of those libraries are used, making it much more lightweight to implement than it might otherwise be. Moreover, the company has provided a substantial amount of support on its associated websites for getting developers started. Whether or not this new campaign works to inspire developers or not, the video itself shows that this kind of project can be undertaken with relative ease on the platform. So it should be interesting to see where developers take things moving forward.