MIT’s autonomous ‘duck cars’ meet Kickstarter goal

Researchers at MIT have reached their crowdfunding goal on Kickstarter with a project that glues ducks to self-driving cars. More precisely, it concerns plastic ducks on small scale models that serve to conduct research into autonomous vehicles.

The project is called Duckietown and has so far raised more than $67,000, well above the $48,000 goal. It is a project that was started within MIT in 2016 and aims to map scientific issues surrounding autonomous vehicles on a small scale. There are now Duckietown courses at universities around the world, in which students build a fleet of self-driving cars with a box full of parts. The goal of the crowdfunding campaign is to expand the project and make it more accessible, one of the people behind Duckietown explains to IEEE Spectrum.

The idea is that the Kickstarter campaign creates a ‘pipeline’ that makes it easier to get parts. These are not always easy to obtain now. For a contribution of $149, backers get a starter kit containing one Duckiebot and three road signs. There are different levels of contributions, up to $3,499 which includes a ‘classroom kit’ with twelve bots and an accompanying ‘Duckietown’ to your own specifications. The delivery of up to two bots must take place in October, the rest will follow in January.