Microduck: Hugging Face's $399 Open-Source Robot Duck
The two-legged bird stands 25 centimeters tall, roller skates, rights itself after a fall — and its full training stack sits on GitHub.
Illustration: A palm-sized two-legged robot on tiny roller skates glides across a workshop's concrete floor in morning light.
Hugging Face's robotics arm Pollen Robotics is taking preorders for Microduck, a 25-centimeter open-source walking robot shaped like a duck, priced at $399 and due to ship before Christmas 2026.
At a glance
- Microduck: two-legged robot, 25 centimeters tall, $399, preorders open at Pollen Robotics.
- Sensors per TechCrunch: one camera, lidar sensors, and two IMUs (inertial measurement units).
- Moves: waddles, crouches, grabs objects with its beak, self-rights after a fall, roller skates.
- SDK, simulation environment, and reinforcement-learning training stack are published on GitHub.
- Hugging Face bought Pollen Robotics in April 2025; Reachy Mini arrived in July 2025.
Hugging Face is now selling a robot duck. Microduck costs $399, stands 25 centimeters tall, and walks on two legs. Preorders run through Pollen Robotics, the French startup Hugging Face owns, with shipping promised before Christmas 2026.
What the body can do
Microduck waddles, crouches, picks things up with its beak, and gets back on its feet after tipping over. It also roller skates, which is the trick that carried the announcement across social feeds.
TechCrunch lists a camera, lidar sensors, and two IMUs — inertial measurement units that read tilt and acceleration. That is the minimum a bipedal frame needs to keep correcting its own balance while moving. The Verge describes the machine as a one-eyed biped and lists four finishes: cream, graphite, lavender, and sky blue.
The part that matters: you train it yourself
Microduck does not ship as a closed toy with a fixed set of behaviors. Pollen Robotics publishes the SDK, the simulation environment, and the full reinforcement learning stack on GitHub. New behaviors can be trained in simulation and pushed straight to the hardware, and existing ones can be fine-tuned or retrained.
Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue calls it an open-source robot you can teach new tricks with reinforcement learning, and frames the launch as the start of an era of affordable open robots meant to democratize physical AI and world models. That is the company's stated ambition, not a measured outcome.
A second swing after Reachy Mini
Hugging Face acquired Pollen Robotics in April 2025 and shipped the desktop robot Reachy Mini in July 2025. Reachy Mini remains on sale in two versions: $499 with a Raspberry Pi inside, and a $399 Lite model that runs off a connected Mac or PC.
So Microduck lands at the same price as the cheapest Reachy Mini, but moves around a room instead of sitting on a desk. For a company known mainly as a hosting hub for models and datasets, it is the second hardware product in roughly a year.
What is still unknown
Neither TechCrunch nor the available summary of The Verge gives battery life, onboard compute, or payload — none of those numbers can be sourced right now. The corporate backdrop is unconfirmed too: TechCrunch points to reports that Nvidia is acquiring Hugging Face for $13 billion. That deal is reported, not closed.
FAQ
How much does Microduck cost and when does it ship?
It costs $399, preorders are open at Pollen Robotics, and shipping is scheduled to begin before Christmas 2026.
How big is the Microduck robot?
About 25 centimeters tall — a desk-sized two-legged robot shaped like a duck.
Is Microduck actually open source?
Pollen Robotics publishes the SDK, the simulation environment, and the reinforcement-learning training stack on GitHub, so owners can train and retrain its movements themselves.
