Biobots

Overview:

Students act as biologists and engineers, researching a species and designing, building, and coding a Hummingbird Bit robot that models one of its physical or behavioral adaptations.

Students create a BioBot Info Card explaining the adaptation, its role in survival, habitat, energy sources, and potential human applications. They showcase their BioBots publicly while learning how adaptations support survival, organisms interact within ecosystems, and sensors, outputs, and code work together.

• Time Taken

  7 × 80-minute class blocks

• Standards Covered

  Life Science (Virginia SOL)

  • LS.6: The student will investigate and understand that populations in a biological community interact and are interdependent. Key ideas include a) relationships exist between predators and prey and these relationships are modeled in food webs; b) the availability and use of resources may lead to competition and cooperation; c) symbiotic relationships support the survival of different species; and d) the niche of each organism supports survival.

  • LS.7: The student will investigate and understand that adaptations support an organism’s survival in an ecosystem. Key ideas include a) biotic and abiotic factors define land, marine, and freshwater ecosystems; and b) physical and behavioral characteristics enable organisms to survive within a specific ecosystem.

  Computer Science (2024 Virginia CS SOL, Grade 7)

  • 7.AP.1: Use computational thinking (patterns, decomposition, abstraction) to design programs for scientific exploration or creative expression.

  • 7.AP.2: Plan and implement algorithms, including planning them in plain language, pseudocode, or diagrams.

  • 7.AP.3: Create, test, and debug programs through the iterative design process.

  • 7.CSY.1: Design projects that combine hardware and software to collect and exchange data, selecting components based on function, size, and other factors.

  • 7.CSY.2: Troubleshoot hardware and software problems systematically and record what worked.

  • 7.IC.3: Connect personal interests and skills to computer science career fields.

• Materials Required

  • Hummingbird Bit robotics kit (or comparable robotics kit with LEDs and both Positional/Rotational Servos)

  • Student Laptops for Coding

  • Craft materials for the bodies of the robots