Watch: Google engineer builds ‘robotic Medusa dress’ with AI-powered snake

A software engineer working with Google has created a “robotic Medusa dress” that has four 3D-printed snakes. One of those reptiles uses AI technology to detect faces and is coded to move in such a way that it seems to copy the head movement of a snake head.
Christina Ernst is a software engineer at Google and has founded shebuildsrobots.org, a website that shows Ernst’s projects and aims to teach girls to build robots.She shared a video of her “robotic Medusa dress” on Instagram and explained how she created it.
“My robotic Medusa dress is finally done,” Ernst captioned the video in which she is seen flaunting the dress with four snakes.



Ernst said that she coded an optional mode that uses AI to detect faces and moves the head of the snake towards the person looking at the wearer.
“So maybe this is the world’s first AI dress?,” she asks.
In the video, Ernst also explains how she built the dress and shares a clip of her failed prototypes. She also explains how she programmed the snake to detect faces.
“Lest you think magically knew what I was doing. The foil snake was my favourite,” she said. To make the snakes ‘move’, she took inspiration from automata toys. Further, to keep the dress light, she reduced the number of motors and soldered them on the fabric.
“I learned to create TinkerCAD models to create snake bodies, then I 3D printed them, spray painted them and added a rotating motor,” she explained. The motor went into a hidden pocket, and Ernst confirmed the design of a moving body with the help of cardboard.
“Then I polished up the code and finished designing motors that can be sewn to fabric,” Ernst added.
The video has garnered thousands of likes and comments.