Somewhere at MIT, you can find the enchanted land of Duckietown, where busy, busy duckiemobiles scurry about. Although this Richard-Scarry-meets-Wall-E world is whimsical, it’s also serious science; the vehicles are entirely autonomous and can teach researchers how to make smarter peoplemobiles.
Reader Faye asked me to post this to cheer up reader Duckie.
Aw, Faye – sweet. I hope you’re on the upswing, Duckie!
I see I’m going to be randomly saying “Duckietown!” for the next several days…
I love this!
But THIS is what I’m going to have stuck in MY head:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s36eQwgPNSE
Nope! not even going to hit the >. I will have it in my head all week!
So glad I am not alone. . . . didn’t even NEED to play it for the earworm to settle in for the week.
DDDD DDuckietown! Hope this helps a we bit Duckie. ?
Duckie!!!!! This is right up your ally. Lots of good thoughts to you!
Faye and Mike, I haven’t laughed and cried in weeks. This is fantastic! Thank you so much.
Allein, I think I, too, will randomly intersperse my conversations with “Duckietown”.
Thank you all for your support and good wishes. I am feeling better.
Go Duckie!
Duckietown goes to Ghana
More details on how they work!
Fantastic outreach.
What an incredibly cool class.
When I was a booblet back in the stone age (the 90s) I had an early version of Lego Mindstorms. It came with a few motors, various sensors, and a brick-like computer pod that took an ungodly number of AA batteries. It came with software you could use to write programs using a drag-and-drop flowchart system. I spent thousands of hours building little tanks that meandered around like a Roomba, backing up and turning when it ran into stuff. Some of them had rubber band powered crossbows that hurled little lego spears.
A couple decades later I’m a cubicle-dwelling professional software developer. Toys really can change the course of a child’s life. Buy your kids science stuff!
Fantastic story. Yay science.