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What is a Duckiebot?

Answer: A small autonomous car for transporting rubber duckies.

The Duckiebot comes from Duckietown, the product of an engineering course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Students in this class, first offered in 2016, are introduced to autonomous vehicles by building and programming duckie-sized self-driving cars. They then set these Duckiebots loose on the streets of Duckietown, a duckie-sized town model that even includes traffic signals.

Duckiebots are reportedly cheap and easy to build, all they need to navigate is one high-definition camera and a Raspberry Pi 3 for onboard computing. MIT has developed Duckietown kits for building a Duckiebot, which are a good way to introduce robotics into the classroom. That’s why they’ve has started a Kickstarter campaign in order to make these kits, called Duckieboxes, available on a larger scale. If the effort is successful, classes around the world may soon be able to build their own Duckietowns.



Kate is a senior copy editor in Northern California. She holds a bachelor's degree in English with a minor in professional writing from the University of California, Davis.