Developing Robotic Toys with Android

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As we are gearing up for the holidays, we thought it'd be fun to invite the folks behind Anki OverDrive (https://anki.com/en-us/overdrive/starter-kit), to tell us how they got their crazy-fast toy-race-cars to work with Android. Thanks to Damjan Stulic, Brian and Tony from Anki answered our call.

If you are a company selling hardware, ignoring Android is not an option. In 2014, Anki (https://anki.com/en-us) started the process of developing Anki Drive on Android. Rather than "port" Anki Drive directly from iOS to an Android Java app, we built a cross-platform app with Android as our development platform. To run on Android, we combined platform-specific technologies such as Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) and Wifi, together with our existing C++ game engine and a Unity/C# interface. We will present a brief history of our development process, focusing on problems that were unique to Android and how the solutions influenced our the design of Anki Overdrive, the cross-platform successor to Anki Drive.

This event will be hosted by friendly folks from Hotel Tonight (https://www.hoteltonight.com/) who generously offered to also sponsor the food and drinks. Thanks Maria!

About Brian Chapados

Brian was a biophysics scientist, before waking up one day and realizing that 90% of everything we know is wrong. He then moved to San Francisco and joined the startup circus.

About Tony Xu
Tony was working in mobile social games specializing in Android. He decided that consumer robotics was a new exciting field and moved to San Francisco and also joined the startup circus.

About Damjan Stulic
Damjan worked boring IT job for 6 years, before waking up one day and deciding that making games is way more fun than playing them. He then moved to San Francisco and, wait for it..., also joined the startup circus.

About Hotel Tonight

HotelTonight makes it remarkably easy to book great hotels at amazing last-minute rates on your mobile device, for tonight, tomorrow and next week. Mobile is about being on the go and in the moment, which is why we focus on the last-minute space – and we do it better than anyone else in the world. Hand-picked hotels, 10-second 3-tap bookings, and incredible deals on rooms that would otherwise go empty.

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