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
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.
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.
skerit
It is a bit weird. As someone from Belgium (we also use our own variety of Azerty) you are very frequently reminded that you're on a weird keyboard. At least for someone who games, you wouldn't make ZQSD the default. It's the first thing you do in every game, change WASD to ZQSD
Ambroos
Another Belgian here, the first thing I did when I started working is switch to International English keyboards. Some employers wanted me to use local keyboards but I always managed to convince them to let me get another one in the end.
tensegrist
…"j'te nique à la kalash"?
willlma
Can't believe I'm typing these words, but here you go:
"I fuck you with a Kalashnikov"
pixelatedindex
No wonder Google was all:
> L'utilisation de la violence ou de menaces armées n'est pas une solution.
When I tried to search for what that meant. Thanks, kind stranger! My curiosity is sated.
PS: What Google said translates to “The use of violence or armed threats is not a solution.”
silisili
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.
It makes sense for multiplayer FPS since it gives you more room to have one key per weapon.
My quake 3 bindings where roughly:
Mouse wheel down - Rocket Launcher
Mouse Wheel up - Plasma Gun
Q - Shotgun
W - Lightning Gun
...
This lets you switch directly to the weapon you need without cycling through the weapons in between.
embedding-shape
Given the amount of controls that modern games have, I'd propose RDFG for movements instead, so we have all the new QWEAS on the left-hand side for even more keys available, together with TYHJ on the right side. Shortcuts galore :)
bazzargh
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)
magimas
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
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.
Typing bash commands on a colleague’s French keyboard was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life.
addandsubtract
Exiting out of vim nightmare mode.
renaudg
They should do a deal: “We fix this for QWERTY users, and in return American web devs vow to stop filtering out Shift in numeric fields, which is fine on QWERTY but prevents AZERTY users from typing top-row digits because those digits require Shift.”
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.
monkeydust
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.
Waterluvian
I think they just need to use KeyboardEvent.code to design for key location, not key character.
zamadatix
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%...
echelon
> Pollen Robotics is a French company
Acquired by HuggingFace, a French-American company.
Acquired by Nvidia, an American company.
natpalmer1776
All roads lead to uh… America I guess?
m12k
Wherever the capital is (so yes, America)
throw-the-towel
The number in your username checks out.
mrandish
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.
prometheus1992
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
num42
I found a few open-source small bipedal robots on the internet. There are actually many open-source robots available:
I would love the simplest one of these with just wheels and an arm. Could do so much with it.
_giorgio_
So which one should people buy?
_joel
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
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
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
IMO with that definition of "toy" you're overselling the value of performing useful work and underselling the value of farting about.
asadm
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.
vessenes
Their current messaging is "we're busy, no promises" on dev kit or API access -- where did you see this open promise? I'm super curious.
UPDATE: That's their kickstarter customer service. Their subreddit has founders liberally promising API/devkit access, targeted at Q1 '27
asadm
i think i heard someplace that ssh/adb is open by default, if true, that is ENOUGH for me to take over and do the rest on my own.
vessenes
That would be awesome. Probably worth getting a v1 and not upgrading the firmware just to be sure
app134
I'm an early backer and plan on jailbreaking Beni ASAP. Seems like really, really cool hardware.
With Unitree bots all but banned in the US I've been looking to pivot away from that platform anyway. Took a couple months to jailbreak the Go2 platform initially, but I'm betting this will go even faster with modern agents
manojlds
Weird phrasing "just a toy" for one and "hacker toy" for the other. Beni is actually something you can use more than a toy.
ghostly_s
> 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
yes to both :)
toasty228
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
louky
I got a Big Trak in ~1983 and came back to
programming and using it and hacking it over years until it got lost in a fire in my mid-twenties.
I'm sure most of those weren't used much.
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
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.
_carbyau_
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.
protocolture
>If the IP holders ever get their shit together
Well they have had a lot of time to get their shit together, and its not even happened a little tiny bit.
But maybe one day they will die? And when the Mormon church inherits the IP they might use it a bit better.
_carbyau_
> Well they have had a lot of time to get their shit together, and its not even happened a little tiny bit.
Yeah, they struggle...
Though... the Unity-engine based Shadowrun(s)/Battletech were decent. Mechwarrior 5:Mercs (not Clans) with it's doing-the-heavy-lifting mods is fun.
But that seems more like them half listening to others-with-a-clue than themselves getting their act together. It is frustrating knowing the wealth of stories they have, and yet they offer precious little.
protocolture
Oh the video games arent toooooo bad.
The Battletech devs sold out to Paradox, and then demergered, and when they came out again they no longer own the rights to their own Battletech game. So even if they wanted to do another one it would have to be completely different.
Mechwarrior 5 is slowly finding the right place to be, but they fired their lead artist so I dont have a lot of hope anymore.
dominotw
nerds cannot resist despite knowing this full well. "for kids"
neom
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
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.
monkeydust
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.
tyre
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
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 ;)
serf
I believe the Microduck camera footage (the ad - reel) about 1000x more than the Mondo one.
quadrature
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.
As a kick-starter project is this thing actually real? My experience with kick-starter has been that the projects are almost universally faked.
reaperducer
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.
_joel
totally, it's on MKBKD video posted in other comments. I watched it last week and hence why I'm split
rtkwe
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
Will Beni/monodorobotics have open source software, or at least a hackable stack?
amelius
Hey we're on HN where __anything__ is hackable :)
(Except iDevices of course)
hadlock
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
Nvidia seems to be pushing Newton as a replacement for Isaac, so I think they're on the same page as you and me
trebligdivad
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
Follow the money!
telecuda
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!
I use one to control my house with Home Assistant. It's pretty great, and it was a lot of fun to assemble.
lagrange77
Sounds interesting, could you elaborate on what you do with?
jamesponddotco
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
> 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
Huh, that's pretty cool! How much of that behavior did you need to roll yourself vs what was already there?
jamesponddotco
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.
telecuda
And since Reachy's software and SDK are pretty open, it's trivial for a coding agent to learn how to communicate with the robot to achieve your desired outcome.
martianvoid
This actually seems awesome, just going through the video on their site made me burst out with 100 different ways in which I would tinker with it, spend time in learning different gaits, some RL or some tricks to have it jump or do a back flip
I can see some parallel between how arduino gave hobbyist a mini computer they can use in any way imaginable, I can see this kind of thing being used to solve unimaginable problems by hobbyist or RL computer scientist or heck any UG student with claude subscription
amelius
Waiting for robot vacuum cleaners to come with extension ports where you can add fun robot actuators.
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.
drzaiusx11
I maintain(ed) node bindings[1] for the old Roomba din OI serial protocol. Although it's targeting the old "create" educational series, it actually works on all Roombas predating the 900 series!
I have already added googly eyes to mine to give it a bit of a flair. It's hilarious to watch it roam around.
dermacentor
Nobody is stopping you from bolting on a modified Casio watch.
taevirus
I think so too
utopiah
for microduck I didn't find but their older reachy_miny was Apache 2.0 and hardware design files as Creative Commons BY-SA-NC
k3liutZu
My wife would love one of these.
She's still bitter we didn't get the Sony dog a decade ago.
raudette
I remember it being the 90s :) the first generation AIBO was discontinued TWO decades ago.
(it does look like subsequent models were launched about a decade ago)
coreyh14444
Yep. I was at a dotcom (ZEFER) back then and we owned an OG AIBO robot for the office. This was 1999 I'm pretty sure.
crimsoneer
Yup, you can still get one, as long as you're happy to pay 3k usd plus the 300 yearly cloud subscription...
EagnaIonat
It's mega-cute, but I can't help feeling it's going to be used as free training for commercial robots.
benjaminoakes
That's a reasonable reaction. But can't we just take the source code and remove that part? I think it's more about getting people familiar with their ecosystem. They want us to be familiar with what they offer when we do bigger robotics projects.
I suppose Moflin is preemptive revenge against that scenario. “How do you like them apples, future torturing AI?”
tokai
Its not even close to being the same product.
utopiah
This "with emotions like a living creature" should just not be allowed.
kodoman
why not?
dgellow
Because it’s a lie. And is pushing for even worse sycophantic products
> Emotional AI Support, Powered by Intelligence
Targeting emotionally vulnerable people with AI promises is pretty disgusting
tokai
Years ago I worked with developmentally disabled people, that absolutely loved animals but could never be left alone with one much less own one. This kind of product would have brought so much joy to those people.
dgellow
I don’t deny there is a market for it
forgetfreeman
I think it's distasteful to screen ethically questionable business practices with segments of the disabled community. If this product was being marketed towards the need of developmentally disabled individuals I feel like there would be less grounds for criticism, however meeting those needs in no way excuses outright fabrication of marketing claims aimed at the broader consumer market, and especially children.
tokai
You find something you made up distasteful? Get a grip. Its just a Furby.
Isamu
How about “this duck fakes positive emotions like we all do from time to time”
kodoman
Honestly I feel that way for the whole AI friend industry that is developing, from AI boyfriends and girlfriends to just kind of AI 'friends'. But this sort of thing is a sort of robot pet and I think the dynamics are different. Some one replacing a robot cat with a cat is not an evil thing in the way that trying to substitute human relationships are.
dgellow
I agree, just don’t lie about it. You can present it as a cute little robot pet without problems. No need to say “it expresses and feels emotions like a real cat”. The AI industry has normalized lying about your products to a whole new level, that shouldn’t be acceptable
kodoman
Looking through the advertising.
> Through communication, Moflin’s emotional state changes. Your robot companion can show joy, sadness, and happiness, reacting just like a living creature would. Moflin does not possess actual emotions like humans do. Their emotional expressions are simulated by AI. And lots of bits of the advert seems to be explain how it's not real in the QA and that everything is a simulation.
I have not used the product, but nothing strikes me as dishonest about the advertising.
ForHackernews
> Your robot companion can show joy, sadness, and happiness, reacting just like a living creature would.
Seems like a lie to me. Compare:
> Our synthetic foodstuffs can taste sweet, salty, tart or tangy, delicious flavors just like natural ingredients.
(But then it's all aspartame, etc.)
kodoman
I guess we are really debating the semantics of the sentences now like lawyers but to me the verb show is not particularly difficult to achieve or ambitious or misleading to use in this sort of product. A toy with a that has a smiley face and a frowning face is capable of showing two different emotions.
Your second one point also does not seem like a lie to me since it's claiming to emulate natural ingredient (although here I guess to be just like means to emulate perfectly).
I don't really see why any one would look at the product and it's marketing as evil. It seems to me aimed at people who can not have pets and are want to create a simulation of a soothing positive interaction with a pet. I don't see this as exploitative (apart from it's exploiting a desire that people have in the same way that virtually all products do), I can not see someone forming a relationship with this to the detriment of human interaction or exacerbate some kind of mental illness or cause addiction. It does seem a little expensive and that would be my only criticism of the product so far as I can see.
krisoft
I don’t know what you are on about. Can the robot exhibit signs of the emotions described? If it can then the sentence is not a lie. If it can’t then it is a lie. Are you saying that it won’t do what the sentence says?
The sentence is not saying “it is a living creature”. It says it behaves as one. How much of that sentence is a lie obviously depends on how well the robot works.
andrewfromx
i bought one about a year ago and used it for 20 days or so. Then I realised casio offered a full money back return for 30 days. And sorry little moflin your emotions were not real enough for me to want to keep you vs get $400 back.
kodoman
They do look cute, but $400 is steep.
andrewfromx
it wears off quick.
iamwil
Plato thought writing was a lie:
> If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written...And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.
Basically, reading writing (without instruction) will only make people seem like they know stuff, by parroting others, when in fact, they know not much of anything.
fdsfsdfsdfds
> Plato thought writing was a lie
Which is an intriguing argument considering he .. wrote it down and not just once. He was a prolific author. He also speaks _through_ other people, mostly Socrates, which complicates matters quite a bit. You're getting a narrative as told by someone inside the narrative about the nature of narration itself.
I'd be hesitant to linearize Plato. There's quite a bit of subtlety to his arguments.
That said, I understand the sentiment. Just want to introduce some nuance into the statement. I'd hate it if people thought Plato could just be pinned down like that.
kodoman
Second that it's unlikely that Plato agrees with Socrates on writing in the Phaedrus. When reading Plato you should think of him as writing dialogues for people to see various arguments and arguments develop over the books, for example Timaeus goes against positions held by Socrates and even more so later in the Parmenides.
Plato is not linear either and if you really want to understand what Plato held you have to look at what the academy taught and what the Platonism became. Though clearly Platonism develops and changes and has various different flavors that academics pick out such as middle-platonism and neo-platonism. I would say it's not definite what Plato believed and one might say that he entertained multiple ideas at the same time, though clearly despised many positions.
ricardobayes
It's a different target market I guess. I welcome innovation like this - it's possibly tackling the loneliness epidemic in however small ways.
nancyminusone
its a cool toy, not a friend. The only way you "bond" with plastic is with some ScotchWeld.
yipinwong
The reason some people fine Moflin terriying is due to differences between the Western and Eastern face reading.
In Western cultures, "mouth" is how one perceives emotions, while in the Eastern cultures, it's the eyes.
e.g.
You see Disney characters got all big mouths, while say, Japanese ones like in anime or Hello Kitty has small or no mouth but BIG eyes.
Same for Microduck. It's got gigantic mouth, while Moflin has none.
---
As a personal preference, I like anime/manga characters but not fond of disney characters nor other Pixar characters. they look terrible to me.
I've tried a few small robot kits and every single one fails the moment it reaches even moderately deep carpet. Either the size of motion doesn't clear the carpet or the motors aren't strong enough to deal with it. The living room is a small robots sand trap. Couldn't help but notice precious little carpet in any of the promo material. What's the point of a robot buddy if you cant play with it in the living room?
modeless
Interesting that they're using Dynamixel instead of Feetech for the servos. More expensive but better quality. I'm surprised it still comes in under $400.
Zylokloto
Basic great usecase (not just fun things): IF you can control it remote, you can check your flat if you are gone for a little bit longer.
ricardobayes
Yeah, totally, it could even scale the stairs if needed. How about battery life though, can it go to sleep then be woken up on demand?
giarc
Or can it dock itself on a charger?
It appears to have a battery pack so a docking station is unlikely but hopefully can design and open source something.
regularfry
The easiest route is probably to have it sit with its back to a Qi charger pad, with the coils in a sort of cape over the battery. Not much added weight for the coils, and quite a neat little intro project to get it to align itself and sit correctly.
sahaj
I think magnetically aligned physical pin connections are better. Charge faster, generate less heat, and better for the battery. Wireless charging is cool, but not sure why it would need to be wireless in this case.
nunodonato
climbing stairs was my first question. But looking at its size, I dont think it will be able to
anentropic
How much does it cost to train a new behaviour?
disdi89
I still prefer (https://roboracer.ai/) 1:10 racing platform well known in academic circles as RoboRacer, F1TENTH, f1tenth, or F1/10.
d4rkp4ttern
Hmm first I thought it’s just $400 but with shipping 30 and duties 80 it’s more like $510
boguscoder
Question is how long it takes before you need a subscription or get paperweight like owners of Anki robots
ibbtown
Does it work locally? I don't want to have a camera robot in child's room
robotswantdata
Yes! At least Reachy can be run fully offline so don’t see why Ducky can’t
TBR007
Is there an app for Microduck, or is it currently controlled/programmed directly through the SDK? I’d be interested to know if there’s a mobile app for basic control and setup.
underlipton
Trying to open the website turned my gaming laptop into a 747.
This has got to stop.
Mxbonn
This looks really cool! The cuteness of the demo alone makes me want one. Ideally I would also love for it to have a real use case in my home but right now I really cant think of one.
tamimio
I hope it’s not built on ROS or rely on it in any way!
Also kudos for bringing the joy of robotics back, since now most companies are riding the “defense” bandwagon and all robot companies I know suddenly are defense companies and visiting their sites is like the most dystopian thing ever, making it harder to find contract/jobs for people who want to make robotics for good not killing machines.
What would be so bad about relying on ROS in any way?
numpad0
One horrifying facts I've read about it is that ROS1 is completely non-realtime and non-deterministic, so much so that its ROSBAG data logs aren't time or sequence accurate. So you can collect the sensor inputs and simulate programmatic behavior, but it's acucrate only if you were lucky. And everyone has to either use it or devote massive amount of resource recreating it right way because there's just immense amount of useful packages available for ROS.
tietjens
What is the battery life?
world2vec
1 hour according to the spec sheet. Would be nice if it knew battery was running out and "sat" on a wireless charger by itself.
NitpickLawyer
Since it's programmable, I guess one could tinker with it to do just that?
amelius
And can it walk back to a charge station and hook itself up?
dv_dt
Add a hack to repurpose a phone wireless charger pad?
amelius
My main question is if it would be able to find its way back.
_flux
The biggest idea of this device seems to be that people would be able to write software to it, so this seems very likely to be in the domain of achievable things, because it has a camera and LIDAR.
tenuousemphasis
You can train it to do pretty much anything.
amelius
You can train deep learning to do anything. But the question is ... will it do it? And the next question: how reliably?
goatydev
If there weren't any privacy issues, I'd love to have one just as a toy.
dzink
All AI images, a robot with no arms. Please improve on both. I will happily train one to pick things up and away with and after kids.
usrnm
Just use the beak?
sahaj
I would like it to pick up shoes, clothes etc. Not sure the beak would work, it would block the camera and prevent the bot from walking forward. Presumably, it could walk backwards and drag clothes, but anything rigid might block the camera.
gpiechnik2
i wonder if one day we will have pets like these instead of real animals at home..
numpad0
Two things that I always contemplate on whether to post this: 1) this can be a phone. 2) almost all of these except Sony ones got joint geometries completely "wrong" to be cutemaxxed toys.
I'm not a Sony employee or anything, but theirs is whole next level even just sitting unpowered, compared to even some of other Japanese bots. Everyone making these cutebots should have one of any of Sony bots to study, even just as a dead kinetic sculpture.
skinfaxi
I think this version has a certain charm to it, reminiscent of Wall-E. I think avoiding the uncanny valley is better than trying to cutemax and failing.
numpad0
All of Sony bots have somewhat abstract aesthetics. It's not about realism at all but about optimizing the looks. There are tons of basic stuffs like concave eyes that Aldebaran Nao had that a lot of art majors and 3D modellers should be able to come up with that lots of these cutebots are missing.
iamwil
Any specific Sony bots you're recommend looking at and studying?
numpad0
The one I have is called Xperia Hello!, and the one I had in mind when writing the parent comment was the one called poiq that was rented to select users on a limited basis. Both require different cloud connections that were likewise shut down. The only one in active support is the latest gen aibo, though its replacement of some form has been teased for a while.
Looks like someone RE'd motor commands for the Hello![1], I guess I should try recreating its "signature pose" command at some point...
Because now you're locked into the Rust ecosystem.
JSONRPC over Unix sockets is a better interface for language agnostic IPC.
elBoberido
iceoryx2 maintainer here. Of course everybody has different requirements when it comes to IPC and if a rich set of supported languages is the highest priority, then protocols like JSONRPC are a good option. But using such protocols for local IPC also has downsides, especially when the amount of data increases and the available resources are limited. This is where iceoryx2 has its strengths by utilizing shared memory for communication. We also split up the data flow from the control flow and one could send data to other processes without a context switch, in a way similar to what io_uring is doing. There is an upcoming blog post where we describe the possibilities shared memory enables compared to using sockets. I'll post it here once it is published.
Like another poster already commented, while iceoryx2 is implemented in Rust, it already support other languages, like C, C++, C# and Python. We'd love to add even more languages to the list, with Go being on top of our wishlist, but like always with OSS, someone needs to do the work or needs to step up and fund the work.
Philip-J-Fry
Yeah, I know the benefits. There isn't a lot of data transferred though. The GitHub repo for this robot has design decisions on it so you can read their reasoning for themselves.
At the end of the day, it's an open source robot so someone can implement these protocols if they see the reason to.
You have to engage in a significant amount of motivated reasoning to believe that.
Philip-J-Fry
Yeah but not any language.
JSONRPC can be trivially implemented in any language which can read/write a Unix socket. Which is any language worth using.
It's the trade off for performance and accessibility.
cekanoni
It looks cool no doubt, but i would be concerned about privacy.
nater5000
Well all of the operations are local and on-board, so unless you explicitly send your data somewhere, privacy shouldn't be a concern.
robotswantdata
If it’s anything like Reachy, can run it fully offline inc inference
hugs
i wonder if this is the reason why those little dynamixel motors have been out of stock for months. (i use them in my robots at tapster.)
bilater
I think in the future we'll have robot pets and look back in horror at how we enslaved animals out of their natural habitats and normalized (even glorified) it.
onestay42
What about the animals that have been domesticated to be pets? It's arguable that their native habitat is the home at this point. Although, I do hope we stop capturing the animals which aren't domesticated (most "exotic" pets).
geoffmanning
I agree with the horror of pulling animals out of their natural habitat, but if you are using this as a blanket statement towards all living animals then you should read up on the history of the domestication of wolves (dogs). It was born of a beneficial relationship to both humans and wolves and i personally find my relationship with my dogs to be extremely fulfilling and i believe my dogs do as well.
I have no interest in a relationship with a robot.
bilater
I know the history. We bred them to be our pets and normalized this relationship. Your pet might even love his life. But we can do the same with robot AIs, and it will be a better relationship. Your robot can talk to you. It can call 911 if you’re in trouble instead of just barking.
latexr
> it will be a better relationship.
There are many many people for whom that will never be close to the same, let alone better. An immortal sack of wires that is passed down through generations is interesting and will appeal to many, but it’s not automatically a “better” relationship than a living creature.
> Your robot can talk to you.
If you want a conversation, may I suggest another person instead of a pet?
> It can call 911 if you’re in trouble instead of just barking.
If you want a way to automatically call 911, how about a smartwatch that tracks your vitals and does just that?
Anyway, stories of pets calling 911 are a dime a dozen.
Where would the dogs go? They don't have their own ecological niche and usually can't survive in the wild. In cases when they actually can survive in the wild, stray dogs are known to wreak absolute havoc on the natural native ecosystem. Total dog extermination?
hectdev
I'd argue that emotional co-regulation is born out of biological origins. Unless we are making synth, it would be a long time to match the relationship with a living creature.
EvanAnderson
> I have no interest in a relationship with a robot.
I think I could, if it meant I could keep the experience of having a pet.
I've had cats going back to my twenties. I dearly love my fifteen y/o cat. She's my last cat, though. As I approach fifty I've grown tired of hefting bags of litter and food, stooping to clean up after her, taking her to the vet, and administering her medication.
When she's finally dead (which is hopefully not for a good long time) I'm not going to get another. This makes me really sad. I'll miss having a cat around. As I age, though, I don't want the encumbrance of taking care of a pet, nor do I want to cause hardship to family if I suddenly become unable to care for a pet (dying, being hospitalized, living arrangement changes and owning a pet isn't allowed, etc).
If there was a robot alternative I'd jump on it. I think my brain would adjust fine to a convincingly-executed robotic cat. Our brains instinctively ascribe agency to objects moving in non-inertial frames, for example. Think about all the people who name their Roomba, install googly eyes on it, etc. People easily accept inanimate objects that behave like living things, to the point of developing feelings for them.
When my cat is gone I hope to get the opportunity to choose a "relationship" with a convincing robotic cat versus not having one at all.
I wouldn't expect everyone to feel this way. I certainly don't want to legislate away pet ownership.
I bet that, if good robotic pets become available, we'll see a significant number of people favoring them over living pets for convenience, long-term cost, freedom from anxiety about the pet's health and eventual death, and the opportunity for companionship in living arrangements where pets aren't allowed.
I've said, for years, that I think there's hundreds of billions of dollars for the company who can make really good robotic pets. If somebody can get the "soft robotics" down and build / train good animal behavior models I think they'll be able to print money.
bilater
Yes, and robot pets aren’t going to look like clankers. They’ll be warm and furry and imitate the sounds and movements of real pets. I think people still imagine robots as some cold metallic insert-Stephen-Hawking-voice thing, and it’s pretty clear even with today’s tech that’s just not what they’re going to be.
LeafItAlone
Interesting how all of the replies so far to your comment assume we’d just release the existing animals into the wild instead of just not breeding more.
swiftcoder
> instead of just not breeding more
As one might guess, the "just" there is doing a lot of work.
Common pets reproduce just fine without our intervention - in practice it requires costly maintenance programs just to keep their population under control (not to mention the massive and ongoing eugenics program required to produce only the desirable breeds/attributes).
If your neighbourhood isn't overrun with stray cats and dogs, that's because someone is funding a spay/neuter program, and someone is funding animal control to round up (and ultimately euthanise) the rest.
All animal husbandry systems have to be maintained via regular culling, and "eliminating" pets would require orders of magnitude more killing
EvanAnderson
I always assumed the "enslaved animal-free" future would be something that came on gradually, likely motivated by economics (i.e. lab-grown meat becoming cheaper and higher quality than farmed, robotic pets being cheaper and more "trouble-free", etc).
I never felt like anybody seriously thought we'd release domestic animals into the wild to fend for themselves-- that's ludicrous.
bilater
yup!
righthand
Spoiler this will end with people having robot sheep, cows, horses, ostriches, toads, and more exotic pets (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
phplovesong
Release the dogs and cats! You are free to roam! Ill think i need to buy dogg pound stock!
swiftcoder
> look back in horror at how we enslaved animals out of their natural habitats
Somehow, vegan-inclined folks never seem to factor in the mass-genocide of domestic breeds that is necessary to achieve their particular utopia. We're talking 1.5 billion pets, 5 billion livestock, and 28 billion poultry - none of which are remotely able to survive on their own in the wild.
j-pb
Wait... do you really think that if everyone goes vegan these animals will get killed, but if everyone eats them they won't?
You are aware that all of these livestock animals didn't exist a few months to years ago? And that we go through these animals every couple months-years?
Everyone going vegan would just mean we'd stop repleneshing them.
swiftcoder
> would just mean we'd stop replenishing them
Keep in mind that we already have to perform widespread culling of wild animals in this category. Having eliminated most of the apex predators, we're on the hook to keep populations of wild horses/cattle/deer/etc in check.
If we cease to use domestic animals, they end up in the same boat - we're no longer paying to feed and house them, and if they are capable of breeding in the wild, they will breed unchecked. Leading us to cull them, ad infinitum
j-pb
You don't get it, do you?
The "genocide" that you describe is happening constantly. None of the chicken we have today will be alive in a couple months. We kill them to eat them.
If we cease to "use" them, we just keep that "genocide" going for a year, but we just stop breeding new ones. The result is no more animals after a few months/years. And you didn't kill any more than you would have anyways.
If you have a sink that is half full because the inflowing water and the outflowing water are in quilibrium, you drain it by turning off the tap (breeding).
swiftcoder
> we just keep that "genocide" going for a year, but we just stop breeding new ones
"Carry on for a year and then it's all good" is not one of the available choices.
Your choices are (a) wipe out the species entirely, or (b) allow them to continue breeding on their own, and commit to culling them for the rest of eternity.
j-pb
None of these animals breed on their own, they are mostly artificially inseminated. You truly have no idea what you are talking about.
bilater
I detest the vegan movement. I'm not an animal lover. Pets are unsanitary nuisances. Robots are better. We don't need to commit a genocide against domestic pets for the transition. Just breed less.
sailfast
Why not foster a dog instead?
I have enough things to take care of in my life through training and reinforcement learning, but if you don’t - this might be for you! :)
antonvs
Robots don’t die if you forget to feed them, and don’t get depressed if you don’t get around to taking them for walks. They also don’t need to be trained not to pee or poop in the house, not to bark at the mailman, etc.
mobeets
I genuinely could not tell if this was a parody/satire or not, I think because the aesthetic reminds me of how a product like this would be presented in a horror movie or something
croes
It look like a disney animatronic it seems Open Duck Mini is it's predecessor
what a nice platform, i would love this to patrole my house and have some fun.
jCalamari
AI is coming for pet market too.
amelius
AI is taking all the fun jobs. Now also for pets.
teiferer
Don't believe that all pet animals are having a great life.
Many people with a dog don't get that as a pack animal it's cruel to leave it alone indoors all day, they overfeed them and keep them alive well beyond the stage where some hip/back/joint pain issues would keep it in constant pain. Cats are the opposite, people get them "a companion" so it doesn't feel "alone", yet in reality, in addition to also being way overfed, there is now constant warfare in the house cause cats (that are not directly blood related) actually hate each other, another word for being territorial. "Oh look how cute they are playing with each other, chasing through the house!" Yeah no, it's Hunger Games day in day out. Other species don't fare better, from turtles living in their own s*it to birds who never can fly. We are very cruel to our pets, often too ignorant to notice, with exceptions being much too rare.
I welcome those pets being replaced by robots.
drzaiusx11
As an avid dog owner I ensure my pets have a rich home life. However, at this point in my life I've seen countless pet owners callously fall short of providing even basic pet needs: walks, enrichment activities, etc. (I've fostered and adopted multiple rescue dogs)
I welcome a humane substitute for those without the time or understanding to properly care for another living creature. Mostly people should not be allowed to have a living pet.
threethirtytwo
Naw bro. These pets are domesticated. They are evolving via natural selection to be suited for living in houses, they already pretty much can’t live in the wild.
Also the dog would rather be alive than not alive at all and which is what will happen if you replace it with AI. You don’t shoot an old person just because he has hip pain.
krisoft
> These pets are domesticated.
Undoubtedly true.
> They are evolving via natural selection to be suited for living in houses, they already pretty much can’t live in the wild.
Ok? What you say can be true, and at the same time many pets can suffer too. Unsuitable housing, neglectfull or worse owners, bad circumstances. Evolution doesn’t guarantee happiness of individuals.
> the dog would rather be alive than not alive at all
That is a deep philosophical question. I have my doubts. But if it is true, why are you not breeding dogs at an industrial scale? After all every dog who could have been born but wasnt would be rather alive, if i hear you correctly. That is millions of potential dogs not born who you could have bread during your lifetime if you were more efficient about it.
> You don’t shoot an old person just because he has hip pain.
That is a great reason for not putting down old Fido and replacing him with a robot dog. I wouldn’t recommend that.
On the other hand if we just breed less dogs, and get robot pets to the people who are circumstantially, habitually, or emotionally less suited to have a living one. That way they can fulfill their emotional need without torturing a living animal.
teiferer
> Naw bro. These pets are domesticated. They are evolving via natural selection to be suited for living in houses, they already pretty much can’t live in the wild
Natural selection has little to do with how pets are bred. The criteria their genes are being selected for by breeders have nothing to do with optimizing their happiness and more with what maximizes profit (which only losely relates to owner happiness).
Incidentally, lots of domesticated cats could survive in the wild just fine, just like lots of somewhat functional dog breeds. But that has nothing to do with whether the conditions keep them in are still painful to them.
Most humans can't survive in the wild. Put any of them in solitary confinement and you will see how much natural selection has done for them. We are social animals, just like dogs.
> You don’t shoot an old person just because he has hip pain.
No, because it is a human that has human rights. Which include the right to live. (Arguably they should have the right to decide the end of their life too, but religios groups are still having a strong grip on laws about that.) Animals don't. A friend of mine is a vet for farm animals and she always gets angry about how people treat their suffering pets. Cow has a painful broken leg? Bolt through brain, suffering ends immediately. Same with similarly injured sheep, goats, etc. No point in letting them suffer unnecessarily. Already horses are special because people get attached and sometimes they are worth tons of money so people rather pump them full with antibiotics. But dogs and cats? Man, people attach wheels to the lower end of dogs so they can keep their beloved buddy for another 2 years, even though that poor thing can't even go for a pee anymore. You can see owners drag their terminally ill dog through the streets which has clearly lost all will to live. We let pets suffer much more than cows or goats and it's cuel.
grommz
Made in China with a 500% markup. No thanks, I will wait for the Chinese version for less than $100.
zombot
Help! I'm being assaulted by some kind of animated GIF and it makes my browser completely unresponsive. I had to kill that tab after clicking the link.
Vastly overdoing the ad part and making the user curse you in the dirtiest gutter language is the way to go. pollen-robotics.com has been etched in my memory forever.
protocolture
I like the big OPEN SOURCE words all over the place, but is the case and full part list open anywhere? I honestly couldnt spot them on github.
Now that Nvidia owns huggingface, I fear their days being able to support open source products are over.
jjtheblunt
i don't think they do. i think they are trying still to get approval to acquire huggingface.
brianjking
.... Minus that Nvidia keeps contributing to the open ecosystem with nemotron, among countless other open contributions.
lrvick
Those are cute, but as long as they ask every single user to run their proprietary code in system memory to use the GPUs users paid for, their commitments to open source higher in the stack are a joke.
baddash
thought this said something else at first
[deleted]
Comment removed.
yipinwong
what is it and why? How's that related to the post?
SomeonesAccount
That is sick
snalty
Ugh, PAL only? I'll wait for the NTSC version.
59percentmore
It's not worth it if you can't have a swarm of them that debate philosophy in their off time.
xerox13ster
I'm not giving it that freedom. The limit of my interaction with it will be
It: "What is my purpose?"
Me: "You pass butter."
It: "Oh My God"
righthand
Like the Tachikomas in Ghost in the Shell franchise?
threethirtytwo
Who says you can’t have a swarm
9dev
Certainly not OpenAI, the swarm is evolving under their roof as we speak
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.
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
> L'utilisation de la violence ou de menaces armées n'est pas une solution.
When I tried to search for what that meant. Thanks, kind stranger! My curiosity is sated.
PS: What Google said translates to “The use of violence or armed threats is not a solution.”
All that's to say, if they'd used ESDF this wouldn't be an issue. You've been vindicated, kind hero.
My quake 3 bindings where roughly:
Mouse wheel down - Rocket Launcher
Mouse Wheel up - Plasma Gun
Q - Shotgun
W - Lightning Gun
...
This lets you switch directly to the weapon you need without cycling through the weapons in between.
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)
I think it's just the splash screen they didn't properly localize.
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...
Apparently this bad habit impacts DVORAK users too : https://brennan.io/2021/03/03/textboxes/
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%...
Acquired by HuggingFace, a French-American company.
Acquired by Nvidia, an American company.
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.
[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/
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.
I have ordered Beni for my family. It's sturdy and more practical for careless fun.
UPDATE: That's their kickstarter customer service. Their subreddit has founders liberally promising API/devkit access, targeted at Q1 '27
With Unitree bots all but banned in the US I've been looking to pivot away from that platform anyway. Took a couple months to jailbreak the Go2 platform initially, but I'm betting this will go even faster with modern agents
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak
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.
Bonus points for laser tag capability like those tabletop tanks.
Well they have had a lot of time to get their shit together, and its not even happened a little tiny bit.
But maybe one day they will die? And when the Mormon church inherits the IP they might use it a bit better.
Yeah, they struggle...
Though... the Unity-engine based Shadowrun(s)/Battletech were decent. Mechwarrior 5:Mercs (not Clans) with it's doing-the-heavy-lifting mods is fun.
But that seems more like them half listening to others-with-a-clue than themselves getting their act together. It is frustrating knowing the wealth of stories they have, and yet they offer precious little.
The Battletech devs sold out to Paradox, and then demergered, and when they came out again they no longer own the rights to their own Battletech game. So even if they wanted to do another one it would have to be completely different.
Mechwarrior 5 is slowly finding the right place to be, but they fired their lead artist so I dont have a lot of hope anymore.
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.
I have been wrong (I love my Remarkable 2), but it still holds as a principle ;)
[0] - https://youtu.be/mfmdXPT7nAM
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.
> 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.
(Except iDevices of course)
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.
Direct links: https://pollen-robotics.com/microduck/ https://pollen-robotics.com/reachy-mini/
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.
So basically you're using it as an AI mother in law, nice.
I can see some parallel between how arduino gave hobbyist a mini computer they can use in any way imaginable, I can see this kind of thing being used to solve unimaginable problems by hobbyist or RL computer scientist or heck any UG student with claude subscription
[1] https://github.com/drzaiusx11/create-oi
She's still bitter we didn't get the Sony dog a decade ago.
(it does look like subsequent models were launched about a decade ago)
I suppose Moflin is preemptive revenge against that scenario. “How do you like them apples, future torturing AI?”
> Emotional AI Support, Powered by Intelligence
Targeting emotionally vulnerable people with AI promises is pretty disgusting
> Through communication, Moflin’s emotional state changes. Your robot companion can show joy, sadness, and happiness, reacting just like a living creature would. Moflin does not possess actual emotions like humans do. Their emotional expressions are simulated by AI. And lots of bits of the advert seems to be explain how it's not real in the QA and that everything is a simulation.
I have not used the product, but nothing strikes me as dishonest about the advertising.
Seems like a lie to me. Compare:
> Our synthetic foodstuffs can taste sweet, salty, tart or tangy, delicious flavors just like natural ingredients.
(But then it's all aspartame, etc.)
Your second one point also does not seem like a lie to me since it's claiming to emulate natural ingredient (although here I guess to be just like means to emulate perfectly).
I don't really see why any one would look at the product and it's marketing as evil. It seems to me aimed at people who can not have pets and are want to create a simulation of a soothing positive interaction with a pet. I don't see this as exploitative (apart from it's exploiting a desire that people have in the same way that virtually all products do), I can not see someone forming a relationship with this to the detriment of human interaction or exacerbate some kind of mental illness or cause addiction. It does seem a little expensive and that would be my only criticism of the product so far as I can see.
The sentence is not saying “it is a living creature”. It says it behaves as one. How much of that sentence is a lie obviously depends on how well the robot works.
> If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written...And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.
Basically, reading writing (without instruction) will only make people seem like they know stuff, by parroting others, when in fact, they know not much of anything.
Which is an intriguing argument considering he .. wrote it down and not just once. He was a prolific author. He also speaks _through_ other people, mostly Socrates, which complicates matters quite a bit. You're getting a narrative as told by someone inside the narrative about the nature of narration itself.
I'd be hesitant to linearize Plato. There's quite a bit of subtlety to his arguments.
That said, I understand the sentiment. Just want to introduce some nuance into the statement. I'd hate it if people thought Plato could just be pinned down like that.
Plato is not linear either and if you really want to understand what Plato held you have to look at what the academy taught and what the Platonism became. Though clearly Platonism develops and changes and has various different flavors that academics pick out such as middle-platonism and neo-platonism. I would say it's not definite what Plato believed and one might say that he entertained multiple ideas at the same time, though clearly despised many positions.
In Western cultures, "mouth" is how one perceives emotions, while in the Eastern cultures, it's the eyes.
e.g.
You see Disney characters got all big mouths, while say, Japanese ones like in anime or Hello Kitty has small or no mouth but BIG eyes.
Same for Microduck. It's got gigantic mouth, while Moflin has none.
---
As a personal preference, I like anime/manga characters but not fond of disney characters nor other Pixar characters. they look terrible to me.
(Chinese but since it's esp32 and raspberry pi it is possible to tinker with it)
I wonder what's the catch? Cheap IMU/motors?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cfIm06tcfA
Here’s the tech specs page, which is also busy: https://pollen-robotics.com/microduck/press-kit/
It appears to have a battery pack so a docking station is unlikely but hopefully can design and open source something.
This has got to stop.
Also kudos for bringing the joy of robotics back, since now most companies are riding the “defense” bandwagon and all robot companies I know suddenly are defense companies and visiting their sites is like the most dystopian thing ever, making it harder to find contract/jobs for people who want to make robotics for good not killing machines.
I'm not a Sony employee or anything, but theirs is whole next level even just sitting unpowered, compared to even some of other Japanese bots. Everyone making these cutebots should have one of any of Sony bots to study, even just as a dead kinetic sculpture.
Looks like someone RE'd motor commands for the Hello![1], I guess I should try recreating its "signature pose" command at some point...
1: https://github.com/lumingyu0423/Sony-Xperia-Hello-SCU/tree/m...
And why don't they show the video feed as seen by the camera?
JSONRPC over Unix sockets is a better interface for language agnostic IPC.
Like another poster already commented, while iceoryx2 is implemented in Rust, it already support other languages, like C, C++, C# and Python. We'd love to add even more languages to the list, with Go being on top of our wishlist, but like always with OSS, someone needs to do the work or needs to step up and fund the work.
At the end of the day, it's an open source robot so someone can implement these protocols if they see the reason to.
You have to engage in a significant amount of motivated reasoning to believe that.
JSONRPC can be trivially implemented in any language which can read/write a Unix socket. Which is any language worth using.
It's the trade off for performance and accessibility.
I have no interest in a relationship with a robot.
There are many many people for whom that will never be close to the same, let alone better. An immortal sack of wires that is passed down through generations is interesting and will appeal to many, but it’s not automatically a “better” relationship than a living creature.
> Your robot can talk to you.
If you want a conversation, may I suggest another person instead of a pet?
> It can call 911 if you’re in trouble instead of just barking.
If you want a way to automatically call 911, how about a smartwatch that tracks your vitals and does just that?
Anyway, stories of pets calling 911 are a dime a dozen.
https://blog.animalreskue.com/guide-dog-saves-blind-owner-by...
I think I could, if it meant I could keep the experience of having a pet.
I've had cats going back to my twenties. I dearly love my fifteen y/o cat. She's my last cat, though. As I approach fifty I've grown tired of hefting bags of litter and food, stooping to clean up after her, taking her to the vet, and administering her medication.
When she's finally dead (which is hopefully not for a good long time) I'm not going to get another. This makes me really sad. I'll miss having a cat around. As I age, though, I don't want the encumbrance of taking care of a pet, nor do I want to cause hardship to family if I suddenly become unable to care for a pet (dying, being hospitalized, living arrangement changes and owning a pet isn't allowed, etc).
If there was a robot alternative I'd jump on it. I think my brain would adjust fine to a convincingly-executed robotic cat. Our brains instinctively ascribe agency to objects moving in non-inertial frames, for example. Think about all the people who name their Roomba, install googly eyes on it, etc. People easily accept inanimate objects that behave like living things, to the point of developing feelings for them.
When my cat is gone I hope to get the opportunity to choose a "relationship" with a convincing robotic cat versus not having one at all.
I wouldn't expect everyone to feel this way. I certainly don't want to legislate away pet ownership.
I bet that, if good robotic pets become available, we'll see a significant number of people favoring them over living pets for convenience, long-term cost, freedom from anxiety about the pet's health and eventual death, and the opportunity for companionship in living arrangements where pets aren't allowed.
I've said, for years, that I think there's hundreds of billions of dollars for the company who can make really good robotic pets. If somebody can get the "soft robotics" down and build / train good animal behavior models I think they'll be able to print money.
As one might guess, the "just" there is doing a lot of work.
Common pets reproduce just fine without our intervention - in practice it requires costly maintenance programs just to keep their population under control (not to mention the massive and ongoing eugenics program required to produce only the desirable breeds/attributes).
If your neighbourhood isn't overrun with stray cats and dogs, that's because someone is funding a spay/neuter program, and someone is funding animal control to round up (and ultimately euthanise) the rest.
All animal husbandry systems have to be maintained via regular culling, and "eliminating" pets would require orders of magnitude more killing
I never felt like anybody seriously thought we'd release domestic animals into the wild to fend for themselves-- that's ludicrous.
Somehow, vegan-inclined folks never seem to factor in the mass-genocide of domestic breeds that is necessary to achieve their particular utopia. We're talking 1.5 billion pets, 5 billion livestock, and 28 billion poultry - none of which are remotely able to survive on their own in the wild.
You are aware that all of these livestock animals didn't exist a few months to years ago? And that we go through these animals every couple months-years?
Everyone going vegan would just mean we'd stop repleneshing them.
Keep in mind that we already have to perform widespread culling of wild animals in this category. Having eliminated most of the apex predators, we're on the hook to keep populations of wild horses/cattle/deer/etc in check.
If we cease to use domestic animals, they end up in the same boat - we're no longer paying to feed and house them, and if they are capable of breeding in the wild, they will breed unchecked. Leading us to cull them, ad infinitum
The "genocide" that you describe is happening constantly. None of the chicken we have today will be alive in a couple months. We kill them to eat them.
If we cease to "use" them, we just keep that "genocide" going for a year, but we just stop breeding new ones. The result is no more animals after a few months/years. And you didn't kill any more than you would have anyways.
If you have a sink that is half full because the inflowing water and the outflowing water are in quilibrium, you drain it by turning off the tap (breeding).
"Carry on for a year and then it's all good" is not one of the available choices.
Your choices are (a) wipe out the species entirely, or (b) allow them to continue breeding on their own, and commit to culling them for the rest of eternity.
I have enough things to take care of in my life through training and reinforcement learning, but if you don’t - this might be for you! :)
https://github.com/apirrone/Open_Duck_Mini
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cfIm06tcfA
Many people with a dog don't get that as a pack animal it's cruel to leave it alone indoors all day, they overfeed them and keep them alive well beyond the stage where some hip/back/joint pain issues would keep it in constant pain. Cats are the opposite, people get them "a companion" so it doesn't feel "alone", yet in reality, in addition to also being way overfed, there is now constant warfare in the house cause cats (that are not directly blood related) actually hate each other, another word for being territorial. "Oh look how cute they are playing with each other, chasing through the house!" Yeah no, it's Hunger Games day in day out. Other species don't fare better, from turtles living in their own s*it to birds who never can fly. We are very cruel to our pets, often too ignorant to notice, with exceptions being much too rare.
I welcome those pets being replaced by robots.
I welcome a humane substitute for those without the time or understanding to properly care for another living creature. Mostly people should not be allowed to have a living pet.
Also the dog would rather be alive than not alive at all and which is what will happen if you replace it with AI. You don’t shoot an old person just because he has hip pain.
Undoubtedly true.
> They are evolving via natural selection to be suited for living in houses, they already pretty much can’t live in the wild.
Ok? What you say can be true, and at the same time many pets can suffer too. Unsuitable housing, neglectfull or worse owners, bad circumstances. Evolution doesn’t guarantee happiness of individuals.
> the dog would rather be alive than not alive at all
That is a deep philosophical question. I have my doubts. But if it is true, why are you not breeding dogs at an industrial scale? After all every dog who could have been born but wasnt would be rather alive, if i hear you correctly. That is millions of potential dogs not born who you could have bread during your lifetime if you were more efficient about it.
> You don’t shoot an old person just because he has hip pain.
That is a great reason for not putting down old Fido and replacing him with a robot dog. I wouldn’t recommend that.
On the other hand if we just breed less dogs, and get robot pets to the people who are circumstantially, habitually, or emotionally less suited to have a living one. That way they can fulfill their emotional need without torturing a living animal.
Natural selection has little to do with how pets are bred. The criteria their genes are being selected for by breeders have nothing to do with optimizing their happiness and more with what maximizes profit (which only losely relates to owner happiness).
Incidentally, lots of domesticated cats could survive in the wild just fine, just like lots of somewhat functional dog breeds. But that has nothing to do with whether the conditions keep them in are still painful to them.
Most humans can't survive in the wild. Put any of them in solitary confinement and you will see how much natural selection has done for them. We are social animals, just like dogs.
> You don’t shoot an old person just because he has hip pain.
No, because it is a human that has human rights. Which include the right to live. (Arguably they should have the right to decide the end of their life too, but religios groups are still having a strong grip on laws about that.) Animals don't. A friend of mine is a vet for farm animals and she always gets angry about how people treat their suffering pets. Cow has a painful broken leg? Bolt through brain, suffering ends immediately. Same with similarly injured sheep, goats, etc. No point in letting them suffer unnecessarily. Already horses are special because people get attached and sometimes they are worth tons of money so people rather pump them full with antibiotics. But dogs and cats? Man, people attach wheels to the lower end of dogs so they can keep their beloved buddy for another 2 years, even though that poor thing can't even go for a pee anymore. You can see owners drag their terminally ill dog through the streets which has clearly lost all will to live. We let pets suffer much more than cows or goats and it's cuel.
Vastly overdoing the ad part and making the user curse you in the dirtiest gutter language is the way to go. pollen-robotics.com has been etched in my memory forever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cfIm06tcfA
It: "What is my purpose?"
Me: "You pass butter."
It: "Oh My God"