Animatronics blend creativity, engineering, and storytelling, and we recently sat down with three experts who are bringing this magic into classrooms. Matt Chilbert, co-founder of CodeJoy, combines his love of puppetry and robotics to create engaging projects like the Robot Petting Zoo. Amanda Jeane Strode, Director of Learning at CodeJoy, empowers teachers with hands-on robotics experiences, while Amanda Gray from BirdBrain Technologies helps educators bring animatronics to life using tools like the Hummingbird Robotics Kit. Together, they shared how animatronics can inspire students through storytelling, creativity, and design. Whether you’re curious about building a robot with personality or exploring classroom-friendly projects like Tiny Bot or Elby’s adventures, this blog will spark ideas for making robotics fun and accessible for your students. Dive in and discover how animatronics can transform your classroom!
Matt Chilbert (MC): I'm Matt Chilbert. I'm the co-founder of CodeJoy. My main job is to make little robot videos. And it's a job I love and take seriously sometimes.
Amanda Jeane Strode (AJS): I am the Director of Learning at CodeJoy. I'm a longtime Pennsylvania educator and I have been building weird robots with my friends for a while.
Amanda Gray (AG): I am Amanda Gray and I'm the Educator Success Specialist at BirdBrain Technologies. If we're sticking with the fun little blurbs about our job, I play with robots and help teachers be awesome.
How did each of you get involved with robotics?
AG: Mine's a fun one. My friend was the computer science teacher at the middle school where I was teaching. He was teaching computer science and I was teaching STEM. He needed a second coach for the robotics program that year and I got dragged into it, thus beginning my robotics journey. It all kind of took off from there. I ended up really getting into it, and when I became a tech coach for the district, I got to work more with computer science and robotics (one of them was the Finch Robot) and larger implementation around them. It was just something that I didn't really realize I would enjoy as much as I did and I really dove in head first, and that’s what led me here to BirdBrain Technologies. Now I get to build robots for conferences, support teachers using our product, like these Project Packs, and continue creating meaningful learning experiences around computer science and robotics.
MC: My background is in puppetry and I've always liked creating little characters. I started messing around with taking apart old remote control vehicles, little remote control cars or boats or stuff, and using those bits to control eyes and little characters. I think, where all of my interests sort of gelled, was actually in classroom robotics. My focus has always been educational media. One of the very first programs I developed was with the Hummingbird Kit with a team at the TechHive in Berkeley, California. We created the Robot Petting Zoo where kids are invited to create an interactive petting zoo and visitors can come in, pet robots, feed little robots and interact with the visitors. We really felt like we were on to something when we had created a robotics experience that felt very different from the challenged based robotics experiences that we had seen in the past. Things like battlebots or VEX robotics are focused on robots that achieve these very specific challenges. That engages some kids. Those are fantastic programs. No shade at all. But we found Robot Petting Zoo and creative robotics was engaging another set of students that typically didn't see themselves as roboticists.
AJS: So my foray into robotics was my first year of teaching and it was with BirdBrain Technologies, of course. That's the origin story of so many of the CodeJoy folk. My first year of teaching I got invited to a workshop in my school district with BirdBrain Technologies. Because I was young, and I put myself in front of our administrators, an administrator invited me to join. They were like, "Hey, would you be interested in doing this robotics workshop?" And that my whole MO at that time was to say yes to everything. So I said yes. I knew nothing about robotics. Absolutely nothing.
I went to this full day workshop with all the librarians in the district. I was the only classroom teacher there. And Katie Henry, the professional development manager at the time, did the workshop and I fell in love. I convinced my principal and my administrator to purchase me a classroom set. And I started integrating robotics into my ELA classroom, at the time, because I didn't teach CS or Maker or STEM. I was a regular classroom teacher and I taught reading and writing. Since then, I have done something with Hummingbirds in every classroom, after school program, and summer camp that you could imagine.
AJS: Let's dive more into animatronics specifically. What is animatronics? How would you define it? Especially for our audience of classroom teachers.
MC: Yeah, I'm sure there's an Oxford dictionary definition of what animatronics is, but I think in a nutshell, it's a puppet that is controlled by electronics. When you build animatronics you’re building real life moving characters. That seems like a really fun starting point for classroom robotics to me.
AG: I think you're exactly right. It's building a character that can move and react but doesn't necessarily have to be a mobile robot. And we get to reach a new audience of students that maybe want a little more creativity or put a lot of thought around a specific character. They're not necessarily focused on a challenge or completing a task, but on developing some kind of animated character.
MC: I have such a strong connection to animatronics because I grew up in the 80s. Chuck E. Cheese was a thing, and so I'd get to interact with these characters pretty often. I lived in California so my family would visit Disneyland pretty often. The dark rides, which are my favorite of the Disneyland experiences, are slow moving story book rides. They're all animatronics, so I have this really strong connection to it. I think when I started working with students in animatronics, I had wondered if that connection would be as strong to them.
In my experience it really has been even if their kind of upbringings were very different and they didn't have the same level of exposure to animatronics as I had when I was coming up.
AJS: There's a huge generation and movement of kids right now that are really into animatronics in a very undefined way. With the Chuck-Cheese robots and Five Nights at Freddy's, I think kids don't realize that an element that's calling to them is animatronics. It would be really cool to see some kind of STEM connection made to that huge movement of kids who are into these creepy things that move.
MC: From what I had noticed the popular robots are falling into two distinct camps which are very cute, lovable, easy to connect with robots, right? And horror, directly inspired from Five Nights at Freddy's or a haunted house or something like that.
AJS: Yeah, we've got the chibi, kawaii versus the horror and it really is a fantastic stark opposition.
AG: It's the whole spectrum.
AJS: When it comes to building robots, where do you think the line is from just building a robot to animatronics?
AG: I almost feel like that comes into play when the robot becomes some kind of character with personality, right? There is a very basic robot to start, but when it can look up and down, turn and move, and have expression then it now starts to tell a story. That's when I feel like it shifts.
MC: There was a tractor on my street not too long ago and they had put giant googly eyes on the sides of the shovel. And yeah, it transformed this very, utilitarian tool into a thing that was telling a story with every little movement, you know what I mean? Depending on how the operator would move it, it looked nervous or happy. I do think it sort of moved into the animatronics realm. You're very right, Amanda. I might also add that, when the aim of the robot is to tell a story or make an emotional connection, rather than to achieve some sort of physical task, you enter the definition of animatronics from my perspective.
AG: I love that. I especially love the idea of bringing emotion into it. Showing emotions through a character is a really great way to connect with students as well.
AJS: I definitely like the idea that personification or anthropomorphism is the push to get just a robot into the realm of animatronics. And I think that that centers us into storytelling as a key element of what makes robotics into animatronics. How is storytelling part of your journey in the robotics space?
MC: For me that is the entire journey. I am not terribly interested in creating robots that achieve specific tasks. I want to tell stories. That has been the goal from the beginning. It is a fun challenge, to make a robot that could pick up a ball and put it somewhere else. I enjoy the challenge of those types of robots. But, the things that keep me up at night because I'm so excited that I can't sleep, that it always comes down to making fun little characters. Especially when we're bringing these into a classroom, storytelling is such an important part of what a teacher does. And so, if you could help engage the kids with whatever tools you could use to help engage kids in storytelling, you're engaging them directly in your learning goals.
AG: If you think about a classroom, teachers are trying to share this content knowledge with students in an engaging way. Oftentimes that comes in the form of storytelling. You are finding ways to introduce students to, often complex or new, concepts or tasks which can come in the form of storytelling. Bringing in elements like robotics and computer science is another level of engagement.
AJS: I want to ask about mechanisms. I feel like mechanisms are an important part of animatronics. What part do you mechanisms play in animatronics and in projects that you've done before?
MC: The basic function of the mechanisms that we originally designed at BirdBrain Technologies was to take the simple rotation of a servo and transfer that into a different type of motion. A servo really just wiggles back and forth, there's limited function to that. If you could change that motion into an up and down motion or a back and forth motion then suddenly you've got all of these ideas. An experience I faced was the roboticist's version of writer's block, you don't really know what to do.
With the mechanisms, you could see a witch and you're like, " that wench, perhaps I could use that to make, blinking eyes or something." It started this whole creative process. So sometimes just knowing the different mechanisms that are at your disposal could help you create a character.
AG: Bridging that with a pedagogical approach, teaching students how to use mechanisms is a great way to introduce engineering design. We can teach students engineering design, design thinking, and more by exploring different mechanisms and bringing in creativity. Challenging them to think: What can you actually do with these mechanisms? In figuring out how to take a few basic mechanisms and bring them together to make something with personality, that starts transitioning into real-world skills like problem solving, collaboration, and critical thinking.
AJS: As far as projects go, I know we all have seen a lot of robot petting zoos! I’ve done my fair share with Robot Petting Zoo in various classroom settings. And, as Matt mentioned, he created the original Robot Petting Zoo at Tech Hive. For anyone who wants help getting to know your Hummingbird and learning how to set up a petting zoo in your school, join us this summer for our Robot Petting Zoo course with Infosys Foundation USA Summer Pathfinders Institute.
AG: Yes, and BirdBrain is also hosting a course, “Practical AI in the Classroom with Robotics,” with the Finch Robot. The Pathfinders Summer Institute is really an amazing opportunity for teachers to get free PD and free hardware. Summer Pathfinders is only for public school teachers and coaches, public charter school teachers and coaches, and school librarians. Please tell your friends and sign up for all of our courses!
AJS: What are some specific lesson plans, projects and products that teachers can use to bring animatronics into their classrooms?
AG: We do offer a new Project Pack set now as an extension of the Hummingbird Robotics Kit. It includes what you need to build a catapult, a rover, and an animatronics. The purpose of these Project Packs is to provide starter projects for teachers and students who are looking for a little more structure when being introduced to the Hummingbird Robotics Kits. The animatronics build, in particular, is designed to teach students how to build and program an interactive character out of laser cut wooden pieces. We have the parts for the robot body ready to build and program with instructions for students and then they can create their character using that base build.
AJS: I really am excited to see that new step for BirdBrain because I know that a big barrier a lot of teachers have felt with the Hummingbird Kit is the building. If we can scaffold those steps for them a little, it's just a nice offering. Having a step between learning how to code and having something that builds and works allows them to learn one part at a time. Then they can explore and learn to build their own robots. It's a great differentiated step for a teacher who needs a little bit more support in starting.
AG: The open-endedness of the Hummingbird Robotics Kit can be intimidating, and now it doesn't have to be with the Project Packs.
MC: So, for CodeJoy, the animatronics lesson plan that we offer is Tiny Bot. The design is from Robot Relaxation where we feature the little classroom characters. They're very, very simple little robots.
They're built with a cup and two little strips of cardboard. These robots are taking advantage of one servo glued on top of another servo to provide an XY movement. So the robot's head can move both back and forth to say no, and then up and down to say yes. Then there’s any combination of movements between those two axes. It gives you the opportunity to create a really life-like character. A lot of our students really like Kiki the robot who's this very nervous little robot. She has a lot of personality and she really is just two servos glued on top of one another. We're really happy to make the lesson plan for that available to anyone that has access to two servos.
AJS: I think we’d be remiss if we didn't talk a little bit about Elby. Who is Elby and how did the Little Bots get created?
MC: By the time the Little Bot came around, I think we were trying to come up with a very simple project. We were trying to come up with a simple design so that anybody could quickly build a robot and get started programming. We just had two little food boxes, maybe they were tea boxes initially. We stuck them together and put two eyes on it. It was amazing how much fun it was to suddenly control with simple servo angles. Watching this thing sort of jerk around and look curiously around the room. It made coding engaging for me again, and we saw the possibilities with this. So I kept refining the design and when Katie Henry liked it, that's when I knew we had the final design.
She and I sat down for a brainstorming session to come up with a name for this little thing. I think the very first words out of my mouth were, "How about we call it a Little Bot?" And she's like, " yeah, and then you could call it LB for short." I'm like, "Great." And that was it. It was the quickest brainstorm we have ever done. We each threw out one idea, we both were accepted, and those names are still used now. We have since taken LB and built an entire show around Elby and Elby’s adventures.
Often times when we show kids sort of the inner workings of Elby, how he really is just two servos on top of one another, they're quite surprised how simple it is. They get excited to make their own. We've gotten lots of pictures and videos of kids' homemade Elbys sent to us. It's always really special.
AG: I have a very special Elby here in my office that BirdBrain sent me when I started going to conferences.
MC: Elby is surprisingly difficult to recreate. We've tried making new ones and if the eyes are just a little bit off, you're like, "Who's that guy? That's not Elby."
AG: I had to make an Elby once, too, to send to one of our partners. And each time I tried to draw the eyes, I was like, "Nope. Nope. It doesn't look like him."
AJS: We have a blog where our CTO Mike recreates Elby to send to our friends at the NASA TechRise Student Challenge. We got to send Elby to space! If you haven't read that blog, it is a very fun read.
AJS: Well, we’d love to invite everyone to join us to explore animatronics at our next free teacher webinar!
Dive into the captivating world of animatronics for the classroom! This webinar takes you on a journey from the fundamentals of creating simple moving mechanisms to the exciting realm of complex, innovative designs. Join the CodeJoy team and Amanda Gray from BirdBrain Technologies as we use the versatile BBC micro:bit and powerful Hummingbird Robotics Kit to explore a full spectrum of projects, empowering you to bring dynamic creations to your classroom.
No hardware? No problem! Join us to brainstorm and discover design concepts, or build along with us and showcase your creations if you have the materials. Whether you're a complete beginner or looking to push your animatronics skills to the next level, you'll gain practical knowledge and inspiration to engage and excite your students.
Animatronics Unleashed: From Beginner Builds to Advanced Designs
Tues, April 15, 7:00-8:00pm ET
Where: Zoom (live, plus a recording will be sent out)
Cost: FREE
