Hugging Face's robot duck MicroDuck walks through simulated snow with 290k flakes
lukas_m_ziegler · x · 2026-10-28
MicroDuck, Hugging Face's robot duck, walks through a snowy scene simulated in NVIDIA Newton with a custom snow solver:
- Snow modeling is grounded in measured snowfall literature dating back to the 1970s: flake sizes, masses and fall speeds; flakes tumble like thin plates; the fall rate is a realistic 8 mm/h liquid equivalent with 290,000 flakes airborne at once.
- Snow accumulates per the angle of repose at air temperature, rides along each link's frame as the robot moves, and feet press footprints into a 2 mm-resolution snowpack.
- The walking policy was trained in Isaac Lab and reimplemented in pure Newton, without the Isaac Lab runtime.
Related event: Hugging Face's MicroDuck Robot Duck Walks in 290,000-Flake Snow Simulation(2 posts)→
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