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Microduck

pollen-robotics.com

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Re: Microduck

#81

Post by reaperducer »

lumost wrote: post #50
_joel wrote: post #22

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%.

As a kick-starter project is this thing actually real? My experience with kick-starter has been that the projects are almost universally faked.

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.

Re: Microduck

#83

Post by nunodonato »

ricardobayes wrote: post #56
Zylokloto wrote: post #49

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.

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?

climbing stairs was my first question. But looking at its size, I dont think it will be able to

Re: Microduck

#84

Post by amelius »

Did anyone get programming in the simulator to work?

And why don't they show the video feed as seen by the camera?

Re: Microduck

#85

Post by regularfry »

giarc wrote: post #68
ricardobayes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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.

Re: Microduck

#86

Post by magimas »

lambda wrote: post #75

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.

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.

Re: Microduck

#87

Post by alnwlsn »

amelius wrote: post #24

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.

Re: Microduck

#88

Post by jamesponddotco »

lagrange77 wrote: post #79
jamesponddotco wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use one to control my house with Home Assistant. It's pretty great, and it was a lot of fun to assemble.

Sounds interesting, could you elaborate on what you do with?

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.

Re: Microduck

#89

Post by 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.

Re: Microduck

#90

Post by nancyminusone »

ricardobayes wrote: post #58
cs1996 wrote: post #6

this looks 100x better than Casio's https://www.casio.com/us/moflin/

It's a different target market I guess. I welcome innovation like this - it's possibly tackling the loneliness epidemic in however small ways.

its a cool toy, not a friend. The only way you "bond" with plastic is with some ScotchWeld.
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