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pollen-robotics/microduck

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Microduck

Microduck is the software stack for a tiny two-legged, duck-shaped robot. It runs as a set of onboard background services that handle walking, sensing, sound and expressive animations, and it can be driven from a laptop, phone, gamepad or browser console. Walking comes from a trained reinforcement-learning policy, loaded as an ONNX model and evaluated in a fixed-rate control loop that commands every joint servo, with policies that can be swapped live for walking or rolling.

What sets it apart is how the robot is controlled and kept safe. Clients send high-level intents such as walking speed or gaze target, and a single control loop arbitrates between sources while enforcing joint, thermal and fall limits. Every device function is exposed through one JSON-RPC contract over local sockets and WebRTC, so apps, consoles, gamepads and scripts issue identical calls. Control, perception, Bluetooth, configuration and update services run as separate processes, so a stalled sensor or failed control loop does not block recovery. Bluetooth Low Energy lets a laptop or phone discover, configure and command the robot with no network at all. Signed over-the-air updates are verified, swapped in atomically, health-checked and rolled back automatically if the new release fails. A MuJoCo physics simulator runs the same robot daemons unchanged against a simulated body, alone or as a group of robots.

The wider surface covers gamepad driving with remappable controls and Bluetooth or NFC pairing, plus a browser console with WebRTC camera streaming and off-network access through a Hugging Face account. Behaviors include emotion animations, preset actions, object pickup, petting detection from microphone audio, a depth-sensor theremin and synchronized multi-robot singing. Command-line tools handle provisioning fresh boards, wifi and identity setup, configuration editing, health checks, log reading and live state monitoring. Build and release tooling covers cross-compilation for the board, containerized builds and packaged release artifacts.

Features

  • Locomotion Policies - Runs trained neural walking policies in a fixed-rate control loop, swaps policies live, and recovers from falls so a small biped walks and rolls.
  • Robotic Platforms - Provides a complete software platform for a tiny two-legged duck robot, with onboard daemons for walking, sensing, sound and expressive animations.
  • Reinforcement Learning - Walks using a trained reinforcement-learning policy run as an ONNX model in a fixed-rate loop that commands every joint servo, with swappable walking and rolling policies.
  • Robotic Control Policies - Executes a trained reinforcement-learning policy in a fixed-rate control loop that commands every joint servo so the biped walks.
13,550 stars·1,714 forks·Rust·Apache-2.0·10 views
  • Unmodified Daemon Simulation Runtimes - Runs the real robot daemons unchanged against a physics-simulated body over a network socket, as one instance or several, so behavior is tested without hardware.
  • Teleoperation Systems - Lets a small walking robot be driven from a gamepad, phone, laptop or browser console over network, Bluetooth or internet with safe commands.
  • Intent-Based Robot Control Arbitration - Accepts high-level intents such as walking speed, gaze target or sit, and lets one control loop enforce joint, thermal and fall limits.
  • Over-the-Air Device Updates - Installs signed releases on the robot board, health-checks them, and rolls back automatically or pushes development builds.
  • Robot Motion Daemons - Runs a central daemon that drives the biped duck's motion and exposes parameters and command-line tools for operating it.
  • JSON-RPC Interfaces - Exposes every device function through one line-delimited JSON-RPC contract over local sockets with push notifications, so apps, consoles, gamepads and scripts issue identical calls.
  • JSON-RPC Implementations - Exposes every device function through one line-delimited JSON-RPC contract over local sockets and WebRTC, so apps, consoles, gamepads and scripts issue identical calls.
  • Fixed-Rate System Scheduling - Evaluates a trained walking policy at a constant rate in a control loop that commands every joint servo, with swappable policy slots.
  • Live Model Slot Swapping - Lists policy slots, loads a neural-network model into a slot live from a selectable source, persists slots across reboots and restores defaults.
  • Sound Event Detection - Classifies short windows of microphone audio with a tiny neural network to recognize head scratching, using hysteresis to avoid flickering detections.
  • Robotic Physics and Sensor Simulators - Runs the robot's real daemons against a MuJoCo physics-simulated body with simulated depth and camera sensors, so behavior is testable without hardware.
  • Isolated Multi-Robot Simulations - Boots several simulated robots in one shared world, each in its own container with real service files, so updates and restarts behave like physical machines.
  • Command Line Interfaces - Offers cross-platform terminal commands to drive, configure and monitor the robot over a network or Bluetooth without a remote shell.
  • Signed Atomic Updaters - Verifies signed releases, swaps them in atomically, restarts services, checks health, and reverts automatically if the new release is unhealthy.
  • Bluetooth Connectivity - Runs a Bluetooth daemon so nearby devices and phone apps can link to the robot to discover and command it without any network.
  • Command-Line Bluetooth Robot Control - Sends commands from a laptop to the robot over Bluetooth Low Energy with a full subcommand set, without any network or remote shell.
  • Board Provisioning and Recovery - Provisions fresh boards in one command, sets up wifi and identity, and ships rescue scripts for devices that fail to boot or lose their network.
  • Software-in-the-Loop Simulators - Runs the unmodified robot daemons against a physics-simulated body over a network socket so software is tested in containers without hardware.
  • Robot Emotion Animations - Plays named emotion animations combining head, body and beak motion with sound, with support for custom animation and audio files.
  • Bluetooth LE Connectivity - Carries commands and configuration over Bluetooth Low Energy so phones and laptops can control the robot with no network.
  • Off-Network Device Access - Connects to a robot from beyond its LAN by authenticating with an online account and bridging through a rendezvous service.
  • Remote Video and Control Sessions - Carries camera, microphone, reliable control messages and low-latency input over one WebRTC session so a remote peer can drive and observe the robot.
  • WebRTC Streaming - Publishes the robot's camera and depth readings as encrypted H.264 video over WebRTC, with the control channel on the same session.
  • Atomic Installation Swaps - Verifies a signed release directory, swaps it in whole, restarts services, health-checks, and restores the previous release automatically on failure.
  • Process Separation - Runs control, perception, Bluetooth, configuration and update services as independent processes so a stalled sensor or failed control loop never blocks recovery.
  • Robot Behavior Recoveries - Detects when the robot has been knocked over and runs a stand-up routine so it returns upright without human help.
  • Diagnostic Web Consoles - Serves a web console from the robot that streams its camera, shows link and health stats, and drives it with on-screen pads or keys.
  • Gamepad Controls - Translates gamepad input and forwarded Bluetooth commands into the same intents an app would send, without owning robot state.
  • Robot Telemetry Monitoring - Shows a live terminal view of requested versus applied commands, joint angles, IMU gravity, fall status, loop rate, battery and temperatures, plus a posed 3D robot.
  • Simulated Robot Testing - Runs the unchanged robot daemons against a physics-simulated body, alone or as a group of robots, so behavior is testable without hardware.

    • Star history

    Star history chart for pollen-robotics/microduckStar history chart for pollen-robotics/microduck

    How this analysis was created: This summary and feature list are AI-generated from collected project material and can contain mistakes. Stars, license and language are imported from GitHub. Inclusion does not mean that we have tested or audited this project. Check the source documentation for any feature you depend on. Learn more on our About page.

    Frequently asked questions

    What does pollen-robotics/microduck do?

    Microduck is the software stack for a tiny two-legged, duck-shaped robot. It runs as a set of onboard background services that handle walking, sensing, sound and expressive animations, and it can be driven from a laptop, phone, gamepad or browser console. Walking comes from a trained reinforcement-learning policy, loaded as an ONNX model and evaluated in a fixed-rate control loop that commands every joint servo, with policies that can be swapped live for walking or rolling.

    What are the main features of pollen-robotics/microduck?

    The main features of pollen-robotics/microduck are: Locomotion Policies, Robotic Platforms, Reinforcement Learning, Robotic Control Policies, Unmodified Daemon Simulation Runtimes, Teleoperation Systems, Intent-Based Robot Control Arbitration, Over-the-Air Device Updates.

    Which projects share features with pollen-robotics/microduck?

    Projects with overlapping indexed features include: nvidia/isaac-gr00t. meshtastic/firmware — This project is an embedded operating system for creating decentralized peer-to-peer communication networks using… project-chip/connectedhomeip — This project is an open-source software development kit and framework for implementing the Matter smart home standard.… petoicamp/opencat-quadruped-robot — OpenCat-Quadruped-Robot is a development framework and motion control API for building four-legged robots. It provides… leggedrobotics/legged_gym — Legged Gym is a high-performance simulation platform and toolkit engineered for training autonomous robotic agents in… isaac-sim/isaaclab — Isaac Lab is an open-source framework for training robot policies in physically simulated environments, supporting…

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