DIY Robots that Share Storytelling and STEM Learning

Using circuit boards, coding, and stories from fairy tales and fantasy, Pratt Institute undergraduate industrial design students recently engaged middle school students in robotics through STEM learning kits. One by Thyan Zou, BID ’22, references Hans Christian Andersen’s “Little Ida’s Flowers”—where a young girl witnesses flowers dancing before they are buried in a garden to grow again—with a box of robotic dancing flowers that doubles as a night light. Another by Summer Yang, BID ’22, responds to the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West as well as artist Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest kinetic sculptures for a robot that roves around on animal-like legs.