Hugging Face’s Pollen Robotics Unveils $399 Microduck That Waddles, Skates, Sings, and Gets Back Up

Reports this week put a possible NVIDIA purchase of Hugging Face near $13 billion. This morning the company’s Bordeaux robotics group still went ahead and opened pre-orders on something far smaller: Microduck, a 25-centimeter biped from Pollen Robotics that looks like a one-eyed water bird and costs $399 before tax and shipping.

This machine has fifteen motors that zip through its legs, neck, and head. A hinged beak dips down to the floor, clamps shut on a sock or marker, and then stands back up, still holding its prize. There’s a front-facing camera hidden beneath a little bright light, so you can always tell if someone is watching you. An 8-by-8 time-of-flight LiDAR and two motion sensors, one in the body and one disguised as an eye in the head, keep it from spinning around while it’s wobbling, sitting, squatting, kicking a ball, or rolling around on clip-on skates. Even when it is flat on its back, it can stand up on its own without requiring assistance. It weighs under 800 grams and has a breadth of 14 cm, making it easy to lift with two fingers.

Pollen Robotics was founded in 2016 by a group of former Inria researchers, who joined Hugging Face’s robotics team in April 2025. Their most recent product, the Reachy Mini, sat on a desk and only chatted, selling over 10,000 units. The Microduck, on the other hand, had a somewhat different concept: its mission is to leave the desk, pick up something, and fall over before getting back up. Again, size matters, since a botched experiment results in a small plastic bird landing on the carpet rather than a large, heavy human-like robot colliding with the ground. This keeps pricing low enough for people to experiment right at home or in the classroom.

When you open the box, you’ll find a detachable 2,600 mAh camera battery that lasts around an hour, a USB-C cable, and a gaming controller. It comes preloaded with seven learned behaviors, so you can either direct it to walk from the pad, send it chasing a laser dot, or simply let it figure out the room on its own. NFC antennas are also hidden in the head and beak, which can activate specific moves when an object with a tag comes into close proximity. It’s a little strange with the audio, though, because the microphones and speaker appear to be playing short creature noises rather than actual words, and the first time each Microduck unit wakes up, it even does this odd voice that stays with that robot throughout its life. At launch, you have the option of a printed shell in Cream with orange trim, Graphite with yellow, Lavender with yellow, or Sky with orange, and the same applies to each.

The computing is done on a Rockchip RK3566, which has a very useful on-chip accelerator, 1 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of storage, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. The robot runs on a 50 Hz policy loop right inside it. Hugging Face did, in fact, open up the software. The SDK and the entire reinforcement-learning stack have just been made available on GitHub under a fairly permissive license. You can simulate a behavior on your own computer or even Hugging Faces’ own Jobs system, then move it to the real duck, see what breaks, and retrain. If you’re feeling charitable, go ahead and share your policy with others. On the other hand, the mechanical and circuit files will remain closed, resulting in open software running on closed hardware. You may have noticed that Hugging Face’s CEO, Clem Delangue, portrayed it as a somewhat open-source robot that can be taught new skills via reinforcement learning, presenting the entire thing as a push to make physical AI more affordable.

Accessories are divided into three small add-on packs, which can be purchased separately. A $39 charger kit includes a twin dock and an extra battery just in case. A $39 accessory pack includes a laser pointer, clip-on rollers, a ball, an NFC polaroid, and a few additional tags. If you want to go serious, the $119 development pack includes extra motors, cables, batteries, tags, a screwdriver, and even some Hugging Face credit. The first deliveries are expected to arrive in North America, Europe, and the United Kingdom around Christmas 2026.