Video Friday: Meet Microduck

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/colorful-desk-robots-posed-among-books-beside-an-open-laptop-in-an-office.png?id=67687638&amp;width=1245&amp;height=700&amp;coordinates=101%2C0%2C101%2C0" /><br /><br /><p><span>Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at </span><em>IEEE Spectrum</em><span> robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please </span><a href="mailto:automaton@ieee.org?subject=Robotics%20event%20suggestion%20for%20Video%20Friday">send us your events</a><span> for inclusion.</span></p><h5><a href="https://humanoidssummit.com/">Humanoids Summit Seoul</a>: 22–23 September 2026, SEOUL</h5><h5><a href="https://2026.ieee-iros.org/">IROS 2026</a>: 27 September–1 October 2026, PITTSBURGH</h5><h5><a href="https://www.corl.org/">CoRL 2026</a>: 9–12 November 2026, AUSTIN</h5><p>Enjoy today’s videos!</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><div><span style="display: none;"> </span></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="ratzeygbgfu">NVIDIA just paid US$12.9 billion dollars for the company that acquired Pollen Robotics, and this must be why.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><blockquote>Meet Microduck. 🦆 The 25 cm, 780 g robot that waddles, falls, gets back up, and learns new tricks.<br /><br />Packed inside: 15 degrees of freedom, a front camera, an 8x8 LiDAR, two IMUs, mics, a speaker, NFC, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.<br /><br />Out of the box, Microduck already walks, sits, crouches, roller skates, picks up objects with its articulated beak, and recovers from falls on its own. Drive it with a game controller, plug in accessories and NFC tagged objects, run autonomous behaviors, or gather several Microducks for races and football. <br /><br />Software fully open source. Ready for whatever you throw at it.</blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"> <span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p><span>On pre-order for an astonishingly low $399, and ships before Christmas.</span></p><p>[ <a href="https://pollen-robotics.com/microduck/">Microduck</a> ]</p><p>Thanks, Matthieu!</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="tbgy6brdxqu">If you’ve chosen to ignore all of the earlier <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/video-friday-darpa-heavy-lift-challenge" target="_blank">DARPA Lift Challenge</a> videos that we’ve posted, now you can get all caught up in about five minutes.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.darpa.mil/research/challenges/lift">DARPA</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="uzv-96uhiqc">You had me at “54-gram robot that out jumps a kangaroo.”</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11553415">IEEE Transactions on Robotics</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="vwen7knkzk4">Sometimes, you just need a video like this.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><blockquote><em>Most fish-inspired robots are built for one size and one job, so scaling them up or down usually means starting from scratch. A team of engineers says it’s found a way to solve that problem. They’ve unveiled ScaFi, a robot modeled on fish like cod and mackerel.</em></blockquote><p>[ <a href="https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/robot-grows-fish-not-machine">New York University</a> ]</p><p>Thanks, Leah!</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="8qlvfdpz4qq">Martin writes, “We’re a small robotics team in Czechia, Europe building practical hardware around the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/unitree-g1" target="_blank">Unitree G1</a>. Here’s a short demo of our lightweight gripper picking up a strawberry; the gripper weighs under 200 g and is designed for simple, sensitive manipulation without adding a complex multi-finger hand.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://sentiorobotix.com/gripper">Sentio Robotix</a> ]</p><p>Thanks, Martin!</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="3kzjnb42dnm">Hybrid visual markers that are useful for both cameras and lidar is a neat idea.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://binitshah.github.io/blog/stretch-4-autodocking/">Hello Robot</a> ]</p><p>Thanks, Binit!</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="j_rrgxeaxfc"><em>EmoLo brings emotion-inspired expressive locomotion to Open Duck Mini V2, a low-cost open-source bipedal robot inspired by Disney’s BDX droids. With a single reinforcement learning policy, the robot can generate distinct walking styles associated with different emotional expressions, showing how characterful and expressive whole-body motion can be achieved on an accessible robotic platform.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://mertcookimg.github.io/emolo/">EmoLo</a> ]</p><p>Thanks, Masato!</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="3c2s1zhuvum">If it’s possible for a robot with a completely immobile face to look frustrated, this robot absolutely does starting at three minutes into this video.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://elib.dlr.de/218609/">DLR RM</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="zvumtotghu0"><em>Noble Machines deployed its first general-purpose robots to a Fortune Global 500 industrial customer within 18 months of the company’s launch and met its first delivery milestone, made possible by its AI-driven whole-body control and industry-leading end-to-end autonomy.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260303533339/en/Noble-Machines-Emerges-from-Stealth-Ships-and-Deploys-General-Purpose-Robots-for-Industrys-Toughest-Jobs">Noble Machines</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="u3hru7dacvy"><em>We’ve reduced the time it takes to go from physical prompt → robot behavior. The faster anyone can teach a robot to do something new, the easier it becomes to scale physical work.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://generalistai.com/blog/gen-1.5">Generalist</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="3hrjrztzkni">I know this video is mostly a gimmick, but I would totally rent a moderately heavy lift quadruped for a couple of days to help with a move.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.deeprobotics.cn/en">DEEP Robotics</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="4u52yao8g3a">Is taking two minutes to excellently fold a shirt too long, or do we even care how long it takes, as long as it’s a robot doing it?</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://robotics.tokyo/">Tokyo Robotics</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="npovvg-8yoe"><em>TRON 2 × Wuji Hand 2 handles TCM pharmacy work: picking, weighing, grinding and packaging. The omnidirectional base frees the hands, while precise gripping and dual-arm force control enable mid-air operations.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.limxdynamics.com/en">LimX Dynamics</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="forsxxxit4i">Person who genuinely knows things about robots, Christian Hubicki, explains everything about robots smashing into walls.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.christianhubicki.com/">Christian Hubicki</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div>