Have you seen a bee dance before? I haven’t, and it is safe to assume that most folks haven’t, either. Bella here is a bee robot, and she will not be hankering after some 100-something year old bee that sparkles in sunlight, but rather, will be the educationist to 400 Milwaukee-area first-graders concerning everything that has to do with bees. This will include the figure-eight waggle dance that honey bee scouts rely on to communicate the exact location of flowers and water to others in the same colony.
The dance will comprise of a couple of loops with a straight run in the middle, where the direction of the straight run will show the direction of the food source, while its rate of looping and duration of buzzing will be proportional to the food supply’s distance. A Milwaukee teacher’s voice had been recorded before to explain answers to questions which have been recorded by actual Milwaukee students.
Bella measures 3 feet in length, and is fully interactive, boasting a 10.5” LCD display with an 11-button-capacity touch pad.
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