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Hugging Face is selling a cute $399 open-source duck robot, Microduck

ThinkingNews Desk · how this was written

Hugging Face has unveiled Microduck, a 10-inch-tall, 1.7-pound bipedal robot that rolls on tiny wheels and resembles a duck. Priced at $399, the open-source device is being produced in partnership with Pollen Robotics and manufactured by Shenzhen-based Seeed Studio, with pre-orders now available.

Written from all 5 reports below, not from any single one.

How it was reported

  1. Hacker News·
    Pollen Robotics (Hugging Face) Microduck

    Microduck is a 25 cm, 800 g open-source biped robot sold for $399 that ships with four pre-programmed reinforcement-learning policies—including walking, sitting, kicking and roller-skating—and can be retrained via a GitHub-hosted SDK using MuJoCo simulation or Hugging Face Jobs. Users train policies in simulation, deploy them on the physical robot, refine the model, and share new behaviors through the community Discord, with full hardware specs (camera, LiDAR, two IMUs) and permissive Apache-2.0 licensing.

  2. TechMeme·
    Hugging Face unveils Microduck, a $400, 1.7lb, 10-inch-tall bipedal robot developed in part by Pollen Robotics and manufactured by Shenzhen-based Seeed Studio (Bloomberg)
  3. The Verge·
    Hugging Face’s new robot is an adorable rollerskating duck

    Hugging Face’s Pollen Robotics released the Microduck, a sub-10-inch, one-eyed biped robot priced at $399 and offered in cream, graphite, lavender, and sky-blue, with preorders open and shipping slated for before Christmas 2026. Demonstrations show it picking up socks and markers, kicking a ball, rolling on miniature rollerskates, following a laser pointer, and being controllable via a game controller. Its software is fully open-source, continuing the company’s AI-driven robotics line.

  4. Engadget·
    HuggingFace and Pollen Robotics open pre-orders for the $399 Microduck

    Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics have opened pre-orders for the $399 Microduck, a 25 cm, sub-800 g biped robot with 15 motors, built-in camera, LiDAR, two IMUs and an articulated beak that can grasp objects. It runs on a 2,600 mAh battery for about one hour, offers 32 GB storage, 1 GB RAM, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth connectivity, and includes an SDK with reinforcement-learning tools, gamepad control, laser-dot following and audio-identity features. Pre-orders ship before Christmas in the US, with four color options.

  5. TechCrunch·
    Hugging Face is selling a cute $399 open-source duck robot, Microduck

    Hugging Face’s Microduck is a 25-cm open-source robot sold for $399. It waddles, picks up objects with a beak, recovers from falls, crouches, and roller-skates, using a camera, lidar and dual IMUs for perception. Its behaviors are trained via reinforcement learning in simulation and deployed through a GitHub-hosted SDK, simulation tools, and a full RL stack. The robot follows Hugging Face’s acquisition of Pollen Robotics and the earlier releases of the $499 Reachy Mini and $399 Reachy Mini Lite.

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