What is Hummingbird Duo?
The Hummingbird Robotics Kit is a spin-off product of Carnegie Mellon’s CREATE Lab. Hummingbird is designed to enable engineering and robotics activities for ages 13 and up (age 8+ with adult supervision) that involves the making of robots, kinetic sculptures, and animatronics built out of a combination of kit parts and crafting materials. Combined with very easy-to-use software environments like Scratch, Snap!, the CREATE Lab Visual Programmer and Ardublock, Hummingbird provides a great way to introduce kids to robotics and engineering with construction materials that they are already familiar with. At the same time, Hummingbird continues to provide new challenges by allowing programming in the Arduino environment, Python, Java, and Processing and by supporting Raspberry Pi.
Key benefits of Hummingbird:
- Hummingbird provides a progressive robotics learning experience – starting at level one, users build and program their own homemade robot using the Hummingbird board. At level two, users can program their robots using computer programs Scratch 2.0 or Snap! Makers can also use the very same kit to run Arduino Leondardo (which comes installed on the backside of the board) to create a standalone robot, capable of doing anything really, since it’s open source and can run on Mac, Windows, or Linux
- Fun and educational for primary and secondary students alike.
- Switch between tethered and standalone modes.
- Integrates with Arduino shields and many third-party electronics.
- Program with the story-boarding software, Scratch, Arduino and more.
- Dozens of tutorials and classroom examples available online.
- Arduino is built right into the controller of Hummingbird Duo, allowing the user to immediately move to that next step.