Welcome to Friday Fixation, a new thing we’re trying. Every Friday we pick one obsession and go all the way in: our favorite stories from the archive, the best of the week’s news, and a little game to play over coffee. One theme, one morning, no half measures.
This week it’s robots. Blame Voxel, the mustard-yellow robot butler who’s afraid of water, and blame a stage in Berlin where four tiny robot ducks were asked to take a nap. Let’s go!
Meet this week’s cover star
Voxel is the first robot from Tuesday Labs, a small robotics lab and design studio in New York, and we can’t stop watching him. He looks like a mustard-yellow filing cabinet on legs, with terracotta arms, knees that bend backward and two pixel eyes set low on his front like buttons on a cardigan. His job is the dull stuff: putting things back where they live, finding your keys, watering the plants. His fears are water, the outdoors and sharp things. A former Pixar animator worked out how he moves before he ever took a real step, which is why he toddles and sways at the hips!
Voxel at home: tending a bonsai, dancing to a duet, blinking hello and keeping out of the way in a busy kitchen. Video: Tuesday Labs
Read our full story on Voxel, including the early sketches and the toaster test his designers use to keep him from getting creepy.
The week’s best robot moment
Near the end of his GTC Berlin keynote on Wednesday, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang invited some very small guests onstage. Four Microducks, the 10-inch walking robots from Pollen Robotics and Hugging Face that we fell for in September, toddled out on their own, and Huang started giving them orders out loud. Sit. Stand. Take a nap.
On the nap command, three ducks keeled straight over. The fourth kept walking for a few steps, then flopped onto its side. Asked for somersaults, a couple delivered and a couple considered it. One wandered off entirely, tripped, picked itself up, and got a gentle talking-to: “Pay attention. Stay focused. Come here.” The room loved it, and so did we. The ducks learned their moves in simulation before they ever touched that stage, which is exactly how they learned to walk in the first place.
Want the whole scene? Watch the duck segment of the keynote; it starts around the 1:24:54 mark.
Eighteen months of robots
We’ve been quietly collecting robots for a while. Here are thirteen favorites, newest first, from a robot dog in a sweater to a strawberry farm run on giant turning wheels. Swipe along and open whichever one tugs at you!
This weekVoxel, the butler who’s afraid of waterA headless droid with pixel eyes, animated by a Pixar veteran before he ever walked.
Oct 7, 2026Robots that build from the roof downA swarm assembles the roof at waist height, jacks lift it, and the house grows underneath.
Sept 8, 2026Microduck, the $399 duck that learns by fallingThousands of simulated ducks tumble so one real duck can walk. Yes, the same ducks from Berlin.
Aug 31, 2026Lassie, the robot dog in a sweaterA capable four-legged robot wrapped in removable knitwear, with legs you can swap for wheels.
July 6, 2026Isaac, the robot that just wants to foldNo cooking, no conversation. It finds your laundry, folds it and makes the bed.
June 12, 2026The Familiar, a bear-dog you can petFrom the co-founder of iRobot: soft fur, bear cub ears, and a stretch to say hello.
Feb 19, 2026Kung fu robots at the Lunar New Year galaUnitree humanoids spinning staffs in perfect sync, right alongside the kids.
Feb 12, 2026Sprout, charming instead of creepyA padded little humanoid with wiggly antenna eyebrows. Think Baymax, not Terminator.
Jan 16, 2026A flier no bigger than a paperclipMIT’s flapping-wing bot flips mid-air and recovers like a bumblebee.
Dec 26, 2025Robots smaller than a grain of sandAbout twice the width of a human hair, and they sense, decide and move on their own.
Nov 25, 2025Memo, the home helper in a capA rolling, telescoping sidekick that clears dishes, and comes in a choice of hats.
Nov 11, 2025Toyota’s wheelchair that walksFour folding legs instead of wheels, so stairs stop being the end of the road.
July 8, 2025Dyson’s robot strawberry farmInside a 26-acre glasshouse, 24-meter wheels turn slowly while robots tend the berries.
Who gets the spare room?
Six home robots from our archive are angling to move in with you. Size them up, then tell us in the comments which one you’d hand a key to. We’re torn between the laundry folder and the one in a sweater.
VoxelTuesday LabsJob: Butler, mostly indoorsQuirk: Afraid of water, the outdoors and sharp thingsMeet Voxel →
IsaacWeave RoboticsJob: Laundry, beds, tidyingQuirk: Stretches up to 5’9″ and skips the small talkMeet Isaac →
SproutFauna RoboticsJob: Companion for kids and petsQuirk: Antenna eyebrows that wiggle with emotionMeet Sprout →
MemoHome helperJob: Dishes and laundryQuirk: Comes with a choice of cartoon capsMeet Memo →
The FamiliarFamiliar MachinesJob: Cuddly companionQuirk: Soft fur, bear cub ears, big morning stretchMeet The Familiar →
Lassieevery elseJob: Walks, trails, runsQuirk: Wears a washable knit suit; legs swap for wheelsMeet Lassie →
Real robot or movie robot?
Eight robots, eight claims. Some are real machines from this year, some live on screen. Make your guess, then tap the card to find out.
“It’s afraid of water, the outdoors and sharp things.”Real or movie? Tap
Real! That’s Voxel, Tuesday Labs’ brand-new robot butler, by his maker’s own description. Meet him.
“It spent about 700 years compacting trash alone, with a cockroach for company.”Real or movie? Tap
Movie. WALL-E, Pixar, 2008. We still aren’t over it.
“It learned to walk by watching thousands of copies of itself fall over.”Real or movie? Tap
Real! Microduck trains on thousands of simulated ducks tumbling in parallel. The Berlin naps were, technically, practice. Our Microduck story.
“It’s fluent in over six million forms of communication.”Real or movie? Tap
Movie. C-3PO, Star Wars. Brilliant at languages, less so at reading the room.
“It folds your laundry, makes your bed and has zero interest in small talk.”Real or movie? Tap
Real! Isaac, the $8,000 two-armed home robot from Weave Robotics. Read our story.
“It’s about twice the width of a human hair, and it makes its own decisions.”Real or movie? Tap
Real! Autonomous microrobots from Penn and the University of Michigan, with their own sensors and brains. Read our story.
“It runs on living muscle grown in a lab.”Real or movie? Tap
Real! ETH Zurich announced these this week. They’re about 1.5 cm long, and they hop. More in the Robot Wire below.
“It keeps house for a family in the year 2062, apron and all.”Real or movie? Tap
Cartoon. Rosie, from The Jetsons. Sixty-odd years later, Voxel is still trying to get the job.
The Robot Wire
● Robot news, briefly
Nine things the machines got up to this week.
 | Robots that run on real muscle. At ETH Zurich, researchers grew mouse muscle on soft 3D-printed frames about 1.5 cm long, and the little machines hop, swim, walk and grab. The walker covers 6.2 mm a second, which the team says is a record for its size! ETH Zurich |
 | Six arms, one ping-pong ball, zero purpose. Hobbyist T-Kuhn built the Hexa-Bouncer, whose only job is keeping a ball in the air, with two cameras tracking it in 3D. He calls his machines useless but mildly interesting, which we think undersells it. Popular Science |
 | A robot puffin that swims, then takes off. MIT and EPFL engineers built a flapping-wing robot under 300 grams with water-shedding wings and a steerable tail, so it can leap from the water straight into flight. They put it through its paces on Lake Geneva. MIT Technology Review |
 | The longest road trip on another world. On October 11, NASA’s Perseverance rover passed 45.22 km on its odometer, edging out Opportunity’s 45.16 km. To get there, the team let it tackle steeper tilts and lower ground clearance than before. NASA |
 | A robot dog goes gibbon spotting. In the steep forests of China’s Ailao Mountains, a four-legged robot from DEEP Robotics photographed rare ghost plants hiding in the undergrowth, then helped a survey team film critically endangered western black-crested gibbons. CGTN |
 | Springy legs make a better hopper. Researchers at UCLA and the University of Michigan gave an 11 cm robot coiled Nitinol legs that store energy and snap, roughly tripling its speed across grass and sand. Bolt on some fins and it swims, too. New Atlas |
 | A robot arm that knows a tickle from a pat. HKUST’s EmArm wears a soft, camera-based skin that tells five kinds of touch apart with up to 99.8% accuracy. When a hand gets in its way, it stops and plans a new path without looking. Interesting Engineering |
 | A robot friend comes to the movies. Jenna Ortega plays Klara, a solar-powered companion robot, in Taika Waititi’s film of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun. Waititi and Ishiguro sat down together to talk about bringing her to life. The Guardian |
 | A supercomputer is going to the Moon. Astrolab’s FLIP rover will ride to the lunar south pole on Astrobotic’s Griffin-1 lander, carrying HPE’s fanless Spaceborne Computer-4. It has to survive up to 150 hours of darkness at a stretch. Space.com |
That’s the very first Friday Fixation, and we had a ridiculous amount of fun with it. Next Friday brings a brand-new obsession. Got one you’d love us to go deep on? Tell us in the comments, and have a lovely weekend.
