The Roomba just got an incredible retro sci-fi robot makeover

Rosie the Robot, the iconic robotic maid from the well-loved ’60s cartoon series The Jetsons, is finally a reality with this smart-vacuum fan project.

The 1960s was full of talk about what the technology of the future would be like. This was more than prevalent in the media of the time, with television shows like The Jetsons being set in the then-far-off time of 2062.

Flying cars may have been one of the more farfetched depictions in the Hana-Barbera series, but the cartoon did feature what could arguably be an early depiction of the smart home vacuum, with Rosie the robot.

If you’re too young to know who Rosie is, that’s fair enough. It has been six whole decades since the space-age Jetsons cartoon first debuted on television. The Hanna-Barbera cartoon arguably isn’t as beloved, or generational as Scooby-Doo, but its aspirational look to the future through the eyes of an ‘all-American’ family is beloved enough to inspire fan projects like this Roomba fan project.

Rosie the Roomba

Engineer and TikTok user ziggy_noneskid began constructing this mesmerizing Roomba project last year. According to their TikTok timeline, after making an incredibly detailed and fully operational Wall-E robot, the engineer started a new robot project involving recreating the beloved 60s robotic icon. Rosie was single-handedly put together using a combination of 3D printed parts, wood, and some clever feats of engineering.

What appears to be battery-powered motors were utilized to make her eyes and mouth move, just like in the cartoon series. Her body is comprised mainly of large pieces of hand-cut wood and PVC pipes, meticulously hand-crafted and put together by ziggy_nonskid. The end result gives us a true-to-life-sized version of the robot maid, and better yet, the Tiktok user attached her to a Roomba so she can do “actual housework.”

In a recent upload on the user’s TikTok account, you can see footage of the Rosie replica moving across his apartment, while attached to a smart vacuum through the aid of a gaming chair wheel mechanism. While it may look simple at first, knowing what’s gone into this creation makes the footage impressive enough for me to want one of my very own.

“Figuring out how to give full movement to the robot vacuum and allow Rosie to follow was a challenge, now onto the electronics to animate her”, states ziggy_noneskid in the TikTok video description.

In a more recent upload, ziggy_nonskid states that the incredible Rosie robot is still a “work in progress” and there are plans to bring her to a local comic con. If you’re lucky enough to be at a convention nearby to ziggy_noneskid, you’ll likely get to witness this incredible project first-hand and see what a real-life Rosie the Robot could look like.