A Fun Evening of Robots in Hazelwood
By Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy
On a beautiful summer evening—August 8th, 2025—the Robotics Academy set up a booth at Hazelwood’s Community Robotics Showcase. The event brought out families from across the Hazelwood neighborhood to check out all things robotics, and the energy was contagious.
The night kicked off with several CMU groups setting up hands-on activities for kids to explore. There was a robot arm that mirrored your movements, a subterranean robot built for underground exploration, and even a craft station where kids could design and build their own robot creations.
Our booth gave kids the chance to dive into a robot programming challenge, with a few simple steps guiding them through controlling real robots. We also had laptops set up with CMRA’s Player-Programmed Partner games which have exploded in popularity lately (over 3.3 million active users in the past year!). These games focus on human-robot teaming and show how characters and robots can collaborate to accomplish shared goals.
Throughout the evening, kids were fully immersed. Some of them even shouted things like, “Mom, we’re hooked!” and “10 out of 10!” as they bounced between activities.
To top it all off, the evening wrapped with an outdoor screening of Disney/Pixar’s The Wild Robot—a perfect way to end a robotics-filled night under the stars. Thank you to all who stopped by!