Hugging Face and its robotics subsidiary Pollen Robotics unveiled Microduck, a $399 biped robot. Co-founder and Chief Science Officer Thomas Wolf announced it on X, calling it "the first truly accessible RL robot" — a 25cm biped with 15 actuators, packed with sensors (camera, speaker, LiDAR, NFC, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi), trainable with reinforcement learning. CEO Clément Delangue separately announced it, describing it as ushering in "the era of open-source affordable robots to democratize physical AI and world models."
Specifications
Per specs reported by outlets covering the launch: Microduck weighs roughly 800 grams, includes a wide-angle camera, LiDAR, microphones, a speaker, two IMUs, NFC, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, with 1GB of RAM, 32GB of onboard storage, and a 50Hz onboard policy loop.
Capabilities out of the box
Wolf's announcement states Microduck ships with "more than half a dozen fun and playful pre-trained policies" — walking, sitting, crouching, roller-skating, picking up objects with its articulated beak, and recovering on its own after falling. Reported coverage lists seven pre-trained behaviors in total, including standing and kicking.
"Open-source" applies to the software, not the hardware
Both Wolf and Delangue describe Microduck as open-source. Per reporting on the launch, Pollen Robotics has stated that the SDK, the MuJoCo simulation environment, and the reinforcement-learning training stack are published under an Apache 2.0 license — but the physical hardware design itself is not open source, and Pollen has no stated plans to open-source it. Worth being precise about that distinction: the software stack around Microduck is genuinely open, and the hardware is a commercial product built on top of it.
Where Microduck comes from
Hugging Face acquired Pollen Robotics, a French robotics startup, in April 2025. Microduck is the product of that acquisition. In a Bloomberg TV interview the same day, Wolf said Hugging Face is currently selling roughly one Microduck every four seconds — a company-reported figure, not independently verified here.
Availability
Pre-orders opened at $399 before tax and shipping. Reported shipping regions include the US, UK, Canada, and much of Europe, with delivery targeted before Christmas 2026.
References: Thomas Wolf's announcement on X · Clément Delangue's announcement on X · Pollen Robotics — Microduck · specifications and the software/hardware open-source distinction relayed from WebSearch summaries of coverage by TechCrunch, Engadget, and The Register — this environment could not independently fetch those articles (egress to those domains is blocked) · related coverage: The Buyer Hugging Face Is Reportedly In Talks With Is Nvidia · Frontier Arcade: trends & predictions