Hugging Face offers $399 robot duck to help you quack the AI code

Hugging Face subsidiary Pollen Robotics has introduced a new robot duck called Microduck, priced at $399. This tiny robot, measuring 25 cm tall and weighing around 800 grams, is designed to make building AI on real hardware accessible. Microduck comes with a comprehensive software stack that covers robot control, simulation, reinforcement learning training, and sim-to-real deployment.

Although the hardware isn't open source, the software stack is, and Pollen encourages users to share skills. The robot can perform tasks such as picking up socks and markers, roller skating, and following a laser pointer. Pollen aims for Microduck to be used for both practical and fun purposes, such as autonomous behaviors like voice recognition and navigation.

The company hopes the community will contribute to developing these capabilities, which might include voice recognition and navigation. Microduck is expected to ship before Christmas 2026, but it's unclear how the recent acquisition of Pollen Robotics by Nvidia for around $13 billion will impact this robot's development.