Hardware verifiedagility tricksv1.0.0Apache-2.0

Acrobatic Roulade (Forward Roll)

Dynamic forward somersault over the duck's head, rolling on its back and landing back onto its feet in a standing position.

By Pollen Robotics @pollen-robotics

About this behavior

A high-agility maneuver demonstrating full-body dynamic balance and shock resilience. Trained in MuJoCo Warp with full contact physics (robot_allcollisions.xml). Shipped in the official Pollen Alpha stack and hot-swapped by robotd during an explicit rolling trigger window.

Runtime contract

61-dimension input · 14 joint targets · 50 Hz

Show details

50 Hz / 4×slot: roulade

Observation vector61 dimensions · normalizer baked in

Proprioception48D

Positions, velocities, previous actions, gravity, and gyro.

Twist command3D

Forward, lateral, and yaw velocity intent.

Head pose4D

Neck and head orientation targets.

Body pose6D

Six-axis torso offset command.

Action targetsscale: 1×

Left leg5 joints

hip yaw · hip roll · hip pitch · knee · ankle

Neck & head4 joints

neck pitch · head pitch · yaw · roll

Right leg5 joints

hip yaw · hip roll · hip pitch · knee · ankle

Actuator model: Dynamixel XL330 (BAM M6 voltage control law). The beak motor is separate from this fixed locomotion action space.

Verification

Status: Hardware verified
Evidence: Verified on physical MicroDuck hardware on padded mats and carpet. Shipped in official MicroDuck release video montage.
Target hardware: MicroDuck v1 (Rockchip RK3566, 14 Dynamixel XL330-M077)
Simulation: mjlab (MuJoCo Warp) at 50 Hz
Note: Recommend performing on padded surface, yoga mat, or carpet to avoid cosmetic shell scratches.

Compatibility

Robot model: microduck-standard
MJCF model: robot_allcollisions.xml
Terrain: flat
Required accessories: None — standard duck setup

Run it on your duck

Use the canonical model and this policy slot to try the behavior locally.

slot: roulade

Try the simulation first. Hardware testing assumes a matching Microduck, clear space, and a safe surface. uDuck does not guarantee that a community policy is safe to run.

Deployment stepsShow instructions

1 Download the ONNX model roulade.onnx

curl -L "https://huggingface.co/spaces/pollen-robotics/microduck-simulator/resolve/main/app/public/policies/roulade.onnx" -o "/opt/robot/policies/roulade.onnx"

2 Add the policy to robotd

[policy]
roulade = "/opt/robot/policies/roulade.onnx"

3 Restart the control loop

sudo systemctl restart robotd
robotctl health

⌁ Try it in simulation

uv run scripts/infer_policy.py --roulade roulade.onnx --new-cmd-obs

Sources

Upstream repositorypollen-robotics/microduck Training codeMjlab-Roulade-Flat-MicroDuck Interactive simulatorhttps://huggingface.co/spaces/pollen-robotics/microduck-simulator