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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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? 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.
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.
yes to both :)
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.
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)
As a kick-starter project is this thing actually real? My experience with kick-starter has been that the projects are almost universally faked.
totally, it's on MKBKD video posted in other comments. I watched it last week and hence why I'm split
I believe the Microduck camera footage (the ad - reel) about 1000x more than the Mondo one.
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.
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
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
Will Beni/monodorobotics have open source software, or at least a hackable stack?
Hey we're on HN where __anything__ is hackable :)
(Except iDevices of course)
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/
I use one to control my house with Home Assistant. It's pretty great, and it was a lot of fun to assemble.
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!
Perfect for kids; especially great that it doesn't come with a display by default.
How much does it cost to train a new behaviour?
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?
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.
Waiting for robot vacuum cleaners to come with extension ports where you can add fun robot actuators.
Getting close: https://us.roborock.com/products/roborock-saros-z70
I have already added googly eyes to mine to give it a bit of a flair. It's hilarious to watch it roam around.
My wife would love one of these.
She's still bitter we didn't get the Sony dog a decade ago.
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)
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.
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
It looks cool no doubt, but i would be concerned about privacy.
Well all of the operations are local and on-board, so unless you explicitly send your data somewhere, privacy shouldn't be a concern.
that's so cute how it roller skates
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
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.
This "with emotions like a living creature" should just not be allowed.
why not?
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
How about “this duck fakes positive emotions like we all do from time to time”
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.
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.
I don’t deny there is a market for it
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.
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
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.
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.
They do look cute, but $400 is steep.
> 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.)
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.
Its not even close to being the same product.
Finally an AI slop I can keep as a pet. I hate this dystopia.
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.
neat! since its written in rust, why not use https://github.com/eclipse-iceoryx/iceoryx2 for ipc?
Because now you're locked into the Rust ecosystem.
JSONRPC over Unix sockets is a better interface for language agnostic IPC.
Cute, and quite something if the sim-to-real pipeline is as smooth as we all might hope.
What is the battery life?
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.
Since it's programmable, I guess one could tinker with it to do just that?
And can it walk back to a charge station and hook itself up?
Add a hack to repurpose a phone wireless charger pad?
My main question is if it would be able to find its way back.
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.
You can train it to do pretty much anything.
You can train deep learning to do anything. But the question is ... will it do it? And the next question: how reliably?
AI is coming for pet market too.
AI is taking all the fun jobs. Now also for pets.
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.
I'm wanna train some to chase after turtles.
That is sick
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.
Its not https://github.com/pollen-robotics/microduck
Ugh, PAL only? I'll wait for the NTSC version.
Made in China with a 500% markup. No thanks, I will wait for the Chinese version for less than $100.