Microduck by Pollen Robotics

“the price when including shipping and taxes is fro me 455 EUR, which is twice my budged”

“a little gimmicky, but demonstrating higher levels of intelligence that everybody can afford”

“Probably worth getting a v1 and not upgrading the firmware just to be sure”

“If there weren't any privacy issues, I'd love to have one just as a toy.”

“how long it takes before you need a subscription or get paperweight”

“I honestly couldnt spot them on github.”

“It's mega-cute, but I can't help feeling it's going to be used as free training for commercial robots.”

“no auth to access the camera or mic as long as youre on the same network”

“it takes a second before it starts moving forward”

“the fact that their simulator actually works out of the box, "batteries included", is a big deal for home hobbyists”

“the only useful capability this thing has is picking up very small items of clothing”

“Hardware projects are notorious for delivering late, with fewer features, or not at all.”

“This is a dust magnet after the first few days of excitement.”

“every single one fails the moment it reaches even moderately deep carpet”

“I think this version has a certain charm to it, reminiscent of Wall-E”

“I would describe the Microduck as more of a toy than Beni. I think you'll struggle to get Microduck to do anything genuinely useful.”

“what a nice platform, i would love this to patrole my house and have some fun.”

“It's not worth it if you can't have a swarm of them that debate philosophy in their off time.”

“Both are expensive e waste, companies come up every 5 years with these "house robots for kids", they're used for about 5 days”

“its a cool toy, not a friend”

“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.”

“all of the operations are local and on-board, so unless you explicitly send your data somewhere, privacy shouldn't be a concern”

“Perfect for kids; especially great that it doesn't come with a display by default.”

“outright fabrication of marketing claims aimed at the broader consumer market”

“i would be concerned about privacy”

“Made in China with a 500% markup.”

“I welcome innovation like this - it's possibly tackling the loneliness epidemic in however small ways.”

“kudos for bringing the joy of robotics back”

“IF you can control it remote, you can check your flat if you are gone for a little bit longer.”

“It does seem a little expensive and that would be my only criticism of the product”

“he had good things to say about it too”

“Finally an AI slop I can keep as a pet. I hate this dystopia.”

“this duck fakes positive emotions like we all do from time to time”

“The Microduck is meant to be a hacker toy. Train it yourself, write software, hack it, etc.”

“Targeting emotionally vulnerable people with AI promises is pretty disgusting”

“The cuteness of the demo alone makes me want one.”

“This actually seems awesome, just going through the video on their site made me burst out with 100 different ways”

“this looks 100x better than Casio's”

“My wife would love one of these.”

“Cute, and quite something if the sim-to-real pipeline is as smooth as we all might hope.”