In its weekly selection of robotics videos, IEEE Spectrum highlights several projects, from the small Microduck robot, offered for pre-order at $399, to a lightweight gripper designed for the Unitree G1 robot, and a fish-inspired robot whose size can be modified.
A small open-source robot
The Microduck takes center stage in this selection. Measuring 25 centimeters and weighing 780 grams, it has 15 degrees of freedom, a front-facing camera, an 8×8 lidar, two inertial measurement units (IMUs), microphones, a speaker, as well as NFC, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth connectivity. According to its presentation, it walks, sits, crouches, roller skates, and picks up objects with its articulated beak. It can get back up on its own after a fall.
It can be controlled with a game controller, accessories, or objects equipped with NFC chips, or it can execute autonomous behaviors. Multiple units can also be brought together for races or soccer matches. Its software is fully open source, meaning its code is freely accessible. The robot is available for pre-order at $399, with delivery announced before Christmas.
Manipulation, locomotion, and industry
A small Czech team, Sentio Robotix, presents a gripper weighing less than 200 grams, designed for the Unitree G1 robot. It aims for simple and delicate manipulation without resorting to a complex multi-fingered hand. A demonstration shows the robot picking up a strawberry. Martin, who reported this project, writes: “We are a small robotics team in the Czech Republic, Europe, developing practical hardware around the Unitree G1.”
Another team of engineers, from New York University, unveiled ScaFi, a robot modeled on fish like cod and mackerel. According to this team, most fish-inspired robots are designed for a single size and a single task, requiring starting from scratch to scale them up or down. The EmoLo project, for its part, gives expressive locomotion to the Open Duck Mini V2, a low-cost open-source biped inspired by Disney’s BDX droids. With a single reinforcement learning policy, i.e., a set of control rules learned through trial and error, the robot adopts distinct gaits associated with different emotions.
The company Noble Machines states it has deployed its first general-purpose robots to an industrial client listed in the Fortune Global 500, within 18 months of its launch, and has reached its first delivery milestone. It attributes this result to AI-driven whole-body control and end-to-end autonomy that it presents as the best in the industry. For its part, Generalist claims to have reduced the time needed to go from a physical prompt to robot behavior: “The faster anyone can teach a robot a new task, the easier it becomes to scale physical work.”
Finally, LimX Dynamics shows the TRON 2 robot paired with the Wuji Hand 2 in a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) pharmacy. There, it handles picking, weighing, grinding, and packaging. According to the company, the omnidirectional base frees up the hands, while precise grasping and dual-arm force control enable operations in mid-air.
