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Microduck

pollen-robotics.com

171–180 of 415 posts

Re: Microduck

#172
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.

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

…"j'te nique à la kalash"?

Re: Microduck

#173
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%.

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? T…

> 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.

Re: Microduck

#174
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.

Re: Microduck

#175
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.

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.

Re: Microduck

#176
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.

Re: Microduck

#178
post #86
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.

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...

Re: Microduck

#179

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 Is…

Nvidia seems to be pushing Newton as a replacement for Isaac, so I think they're on the same page as you and me

Re: Microduck

#180
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.

Typing bash commands on a colleague’s French keyboard was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life.
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