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Posted by robotswantdata 18 hours ago

Microduck(pollen-robotics.com)
574 points | 195 comments
EagnaIonat 8 minutes ago|
It's mega-cute, but I can't help feeling it's going to be used as free training for commercial robots.
num42 2 hours ago||
I found a few open-source small bipedal robots on the internet. There are actually many open-source robots available:

[1]. https://robotics.umich.edu/news/2024/a-smaller-simpler-biped...

https://github.com/daviddoo02/Legolas-an-open-source-biped

[2].https://github.com/MuShibo/Micro-Wheeled_leg-Robot

[3].https://github.com/Yuexuan9/Tinker

Quadruped:

[1].https://github.com/stanfordroboticsclub/StanfordQuadruped

[2].https://open-dynamic-robot-initiative.github.io/

lambda 14 hours ago||
Tried out the simulator and was surprised to find that the movement keys are ZQSD; then realized that's the equivalent of WASD on an AZERTY keyboard. Checked and sure enough, Pollen Robotics is a French company.

They may want to at least add a preference for keyboard layout, pretty sure that QWERTY and QWERTZ are much more common worldwide than AZERTY.

wiether 10 hours ago||
As a French guy who grew up playing CS 1.6 on an AZERTY keyboard, I have a feeling that the people who made this website are either a generation above or below Millenials.

Because it doesn't make sense: you don't make a website in English, with prices in USD... while expecting users to have an AZERTY keyboard.

We even had a meme and tshirts about it: https://wiki.nofrag.com/Jte_niaue_q_lq_Kqlqsh

tyre 8 hours ago|||
I'm a millenial and can say you can absolutely make a site with i18n + currency conversion without knowing what keyboards people use. Especially Americans, who are much less familiar with "other markets", because companies can stay within US customers for so long.
tensegrist 7 hours ago|||
…"j'te nique à la kalash"?
willlma 3 hours ago||
Can't believe I'm typing these words, but here you go: "I fuck you with a Kalashnikov"
silisili 5 hours ago|||
When I started out playing Quake 1 many moons ago, when I complained about how to reach keybindings as I was using the arrow keys, a veteran player on the server told me patiently to use ESDF like a normal person. So I did, and learned, and it stuck with me. It wasn't until years later I realized that was more a rarity and people usually use WASD. I kept ESDF because I was used to it, and because it's nice have those two extra left keys as additional bindings.

All that's to say, if they'd used ESDF this wouldn't be an issue. You've been vindicated, kind hero.

d3Xt3r 8 minutes ago||
There was an interesting discussion around this a couple of years ago, I was quite surprised to see people still using ESDF: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41148889
bazzargh 9 hours ago|||
Interestingly, the 10-lines-of-basic competition, which has been running the last 15 years (https://itch.io/profile/bunsen), has this covered in the rules:

15. If the game is controlled with the keyboard, use "O" for left, "P" for right, "E" for up and "D" for down if possible; this takes into account the most important keyboard layouts (no disadvantages for emulator users with QWERTZ, QWERTY or AZERTY keyboards)

chatmasta 5 hours ago|||
Typing bash commands on a colleague’s French keyboard was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life.
addandsubtract 5 hours ago||
Exiting out of vim nightmare mode.
magimas 13 hours ago|||
At least my QUERTZ layout also works as expected in the simulator. You use WASD to move the duck, Q and E to kick left and right etc.

I think it's just the splash screen they didn't properly localize.

lambda 6 hours ago||
Huh, when I tried it WASD didn't work like I expected, hence I went back and checked and saw that it was ZQSD. Looks like they might have fixed it now since I posted. Either that or the lagginess caught me up; it takes a second before it starts moving forward, it might be I got caught up by that, went back to look at the instructions and noticed the ZQSD, then went back and used the arrow keys since that was easier.

edit: just checked the code, and they cover both layouts by using the physical key code rather than the character. And that was committed before I tried it. So it must have been the fact that it was a bit slow to respond that got me.

https://huggingface.co/spaces/pollen-robotics/microduck-simu...

hadlock 7 hours ago|||
Having tried (and failed) to use Issac to do the same thing, the fact that their simulator actually works out of the box, "batteries included", is a big deal for home hobbyists.
Waterluvian 4 hours ago|||
I think they just need to use KeyboardEvent.code to design for key location, not key character.
zamadatix 3 hours ago||
They do, which is why WASD (or whatever the positional equivalent in your layout is) work despite the text saying to press ZQSD. This only solves the input though, it doesn't let the page know ahead of time what letter it should tell you to press for those 4 positional inputs.

Chromium based browsers support navigator.keyboard.getLayoutMap() to tackle this exact problem. Safari and Firefox do not due to concerns over fingerprinting. Still, it wouldn't hurt to add this second half for those users https://caniuse.com/?search=navigator.keyboard.getLayoutMap%...

monkeydust 11 hours ago|||
Or just add the key commands as a hint to the simulation page. Was so keen to try it didnt really register the commands and assumed WASD.
echelon 14 hours ago||
> Pollen Robotics is a French company

Acquired by HuggingFace, a French-American company.

Acquired by Nvidia, an American company.

natpalmer1776 13 hours ago||
All roads lead to uh… America I guess?
m12k 13 hours ago|||
Wherever the capital is (so yes, America)
throw-the-towel 10 hours ago|||
The number in your username checks out.
prometheus1992 13 hours ago||
Not sure many people know this - most of the robotics stuff that you see in the news is based on MujoCo (Multi-Joint dynamics with Contact) engine, that is used primarily to create simulated environments in which these robots learn the RL policies. This project is maintained by Google deepmind - https://github.com/google-deepmind/mujoco
mrandish 7 hours ago||
Page is so dense, couldn't find the specs:

Rockchip RK3566 processor with an AI accelerator, 1GB RAM, 32GB storage, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microphones, speaker, two NFC antennas and removable battery (~1 hour runtime). Onboard policy loop: 50 hertz, Dynamixel servos, weight: 800g.

Seven behaviors at ship: walking, sitting and standing, kicking, ground pickup, roller skating and self-recovery, can train additional behaviors locally or through Hugging Face Jobs, export to ONNX and deploy through open-source runtime. Software: SDK, a MuJoCo-based simulator, training scripts, tools for transferring policies from simulation to the physical robot.

_joel 16 hours ago||
It's either this or https://mondorobotics.com/ and I'm torn. Obviously it's for my daughter and I will just be safety checking, definitely, 100%.
Philip-J-Fry 15 hours ago||
That's a completely different class of robot. The Beni robot is just a toy, it's just connect the app and drive it around, record videos and do some fancy tricks like flips. It is not meant to be a platform you program yourself.

The Microduck is meant to be a hacker toy. Train it yourself, write software, hack it, etc.

It depends what you're trying to get for your daughter. Is it something to get her into robotics? Then probably the Microduck is the way. If it's literally just a toy, then the Beni robot is better because that's literally all it is.

modeless 11 hours ago|||
I would describe the Microduck as more of a toy than Beni. Autonomous cameraman is a real application that Beni performs out of the box. I think you'll struggle to get Microduck to do anything genuinely useful.
onoesworkacct 4 hours ago||
IMO with that definition of "toy" you're overselling the value of performing useful work and underselling the value of farting about.
asadm 14 hours ago||||
The creators of Beni seem to have promised that the platform will be open (including sim2real parts of Beni).

I have ordered Beni for my family. It's sturdy and more practical for careless fun.

ghostly_s 7 hours ago||||
> Train it yourself, write software, hack it, etc.

it seems like the only useful capability this thing has is picking up very small items of clothing with I imagine a very low success rate.

_joel 15 hours ago|||
yes to both :)
neom 15 hours ago|||
MKBHD covered Beni the other day and it looks like a super super fun toy. Not sure about the educational value, but I was thinking about getting one for the kid in my life (me). https://youtu.be/mfmdXPT7nAM?t=592 (9:52)
rtkwe 10 hours ago||
My favorite bit from that was when he had it do a flip and the battery ejected from it's niche and it died. Also the constant suicide attempts from trying to run it on a table but that's a problem for any mobile robot and tabletop demos.
toasty228 13 hours ago|||
Both are expensive e waste, companies come up every 5 years with these "house robots for kids", they're used for about 5 days, I've seen the cycle many times already
_carbyau_ 1 hour ago|||
I love Battletech. If the IP holders ever get their shit together and have a properly walking Vulture/Mad-Dog, I'm sold.

Bonus points for laser tag capability like those tabletop tanks.

robotresearcher 9 hours ago||||
The household robot business other than vacuums are a classic way to lose your shirt, sadly.

Many, many startups and several megacorps have burned their money. Robots are so fun to make, if you have that spirit in you! But alas they are very, very hard to make valuable outside of manufacturing /warehousing/weapons.

random3 13 hours ago||||
Makes sense. Unless you can disassemble/reassemble. I guess selling kits (Meccano, Technics) would be the better approach. I recall countless hours building stuff and my kids love their Magnetiles and everything that lets them build in a free-form.
dominotw 8 hours ago|||
nerds cannot resist despite knowing this full well. "for kids"
monkeydust 15 hours ago|||
I got this for my kids https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doly/doly-more-than-a-r... earlier this year (after a much longer than expected wait on Kickstarter)...was good for a bit and had some fun but mostly gathering dust now. Occasionally will come out if friends are over.
serf 15 hours ago|||
I believe the Microduck camera footage (the ad - reel) about 1000x more than the Mondo one.
quadrature 15 hours ago|||
For what it’s worth the mondo team has been posting development log videos on Reddit since before they incorporated. They raised money so they now have ads with more production value, but they came from small beginnings and I do trust their product.
sowrabh 15 hours ago||
FWIW Beni also figured in MKBHD's review recently and he had good things to say about it too - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfmdXPT7nAM&t=590s
vavos 15 hours ago|||
The mondo beni bot was featured on mkbhd recently looked to work pretty well and got a positive review, for what's that's worth [0]

[0] - https://youtu.be/mfmdXPT7nAM

tyre 8 hours ago|||
Personally I wouldn't choose one that hasn't shipped. Hardware projects are notorious for delivering late, with fewer features, or not at all.

Microduck looks amazing, but the "Ships before Christmas 2026" is begging to be blown past. That's why I'm not pre-ordering. If it's around in the spring, let's go, but considering that HuggingFace just got acquired by Nvidia, I'm not sure where this all will go.

marcus_holmes 4 hours ago||
100%, and I go further to "don't buy hardware until it hits version 3" - version 1 is full of bugs, version 2 tries to include all the stuff they couldn't fit into the original version 1, so it's not until version 3 they've got a clear idea of what the thing should be and how to make it without bugs.

I have been wrong (I love my Remarkable 2), but it still holds as a principle ;)

lumost 15 hours ago|||
As a kick-starter project is this thing actually real? My experience with kick-starter has been that the projects are almost universally faked.
_joel 15 hours ago|||
totally, it's on MKBKD video posted in other comments. I watched it last week and hence why I'm split
reaperducer 14 hours ago|||
As a kick-starter project is this thing actually real? My experience with kick-starter has been that the projects are almost universally faked.

I've only contributed to three kickstarters, and they all worked out well. But I think I'm more selective than most people, and generally don't jump on something until it's already been fully funded by other people.

rtkwe 10 hours ago|||
Boni seems more like a closed project and I'd rather have something where access isn't an afterthought as indicated on the Kickstarter.

> Right now, we simply haven't reached any conclusions regarding developer tools, documentation, or access. We haven't done the planning or the groundwork yet. Our current plan is to look into all of this after we've shipped the first batch and things settle down a bit.

unglaublich 16 hours ago||
Will Beni/monodorobotics have open source software, or at least a hackable stack?
amelius 15 hours ago||
Hey we're on HN where __anything__ is hackable :)

(Except iDevices of course)

trebligdivad 14 hours ago||
Oh so this is why Nvidia (edit: trying to buy)/bought Hugging Face, $1B for all the ai sharing and stuff, and $12B for the duck!
antonvs 9 hours ago|
Follow the money!
hadlock 7 hours ago||
What is really interesting for me is that they're not using Nvidia's Issac, which is famously impossible to get up and running for a custom robot by individual contributors. I can't tell how good their system is, but the fact that I got it running on my laptop in under an hour, vs wasting over a week of my spare time on Issac (ref: countless reddit threads by hundreds of people also failing to train their robot on Issac) gives me confidence I can finally convert my terrible IK stuff on my robot, to use this other framework.

This appears to be using mjlab, which is is MuJoCo Warp plus rsl_rl, which uses a completely different design/technology heritage from Issac, so that's worth a lot to me, since I've basically sworn off Issac for robot gait training.

ethanlipson 6 hours ago|
Nvidia seems to be pushing Newton as a replacement for Isaac, so I think they're on the same page as you and me
telecuda 15 hours ago||
It doesn't walk like a duck, but Reachy Mini by HF/Pollen Robotics is a great entry-level robot. And you get to assemble it!

Direct links: https://pollen-robotics.com/microduck/ https://pollen-robotics.com/reachy-mini/

jamesponddotco 14 hours ago||
I use one to control my house with Home Assistant. It's pretty great, and it was a lot of fun to assemble.
lagrange77 14 hours ago||
Sounds interesting, could you elaborate on what you do with?
jamesponddotco 13 hours ago||
Not much to say, really; it controls my house in Home Assistant using an LLM, and a STT/TTS server. It acts as the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition, with a trigger word and whatnot.

It's basically like giving an Alexa, Siri, or Gemini a body. It moves, show "emotions", comments when someone enter the room, uses the camera to see who entered the room and comment on that, make comments when my 3D printer finishes, things like that.

I can also turn on lights, the TV, the AC, ask about the weather, and other basic assistant stuff, ofc.

lagrange77 11 hours ago|||
> It moves, show "emotions", comments when someone enter the room, uses the camera to see who entered the room and comment on that, make comments when my 3D printer finishes, things like that.

So basically you're using it as an AI mother in law, nice.

borgel 12 hours ago|||
Huh, that's pretty cool! How much of that behavior did you need to roll yourself vs what was already there?
jamesponddotco 11 hours ago||
There is an application for Reachy that makes it so you can connect to Home Assistant, but it's broken and seems abandoned, so I forked it, fixed it, and customized it. That gets you 80% of the way. The rest is based on automations built inside Home Assistant.
amelius 16 hours ago|
Waiting for robot vacuum cleaners to come with extension ports where you can add fun robot actuators.
xnx 16 hours ago||
Getting close: https://us.roborock.com/products/roborock-saros-z70
alnwlsn 13 hours ago|||
Old Roombas used to come with a serial port so you could use drive the motors and use it as a robot base. Then, you stick a wireless router and a webcam on top - no raspberry pi in those days.
taevirus 42 minutes ago|||
I think so too
ricardobayes 15 hours ago||
I have already added googly eyes to mine to give it a bit of a flair. It's hilarious to watch it roam around.
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