CARD · Card record
Hugging Face launches MicroDuck, a $399 open-source bipedal robot duck
Pollen Robotics, the French subsidiary Hugging Face acquired in April 2025, unveiled MicroDuck: a 25 cm, 800 g bipedal robot duck with 15 motors, a front camera plus LiDAR, and a grasping beak. It ships with 7 reinforcement-learned skills (walk, sit, kick, grab, roller skate, self-right). Policies train in MuJoCo simulation before sim-to-real deployment on a 50 Hz onboard loop; the SDK and full RL stack are open source (Apache-2.0), the hardware is not. $399 introductory price; pre-orders opened August 27, shipping planned before Christmas per The Register.
01
THE STORY · The original
Read the explanation and its limits.
- Originalofficial statementhttps://pollen-robotics.com/microduck/
Why it is worth understanding
A factual expansion of Hugging Face's platform boundary: from model repository into physical robots, pulling the entry price of physical-AI experimentation down to $399. With the full RL training stack open sourced, skills can be retrained and shared like models — whether embodied AI gets its app-store moment is worth tracking as an object.
Conditions and limitations
Specs and pricing come from the maker's official page and The Register's launch coverage (fetched and checked by BitShovel on 2026-08-31), not an independent review; shipping before Christmas is a plan, not a commitment, and production capacity is unverified; roller skating and grabbing are shipped controlled skills with an estimated payload of roughly 100 grams; the Nvidia acquisition rumor is unconfirmed by every party and is not a basis for decisions.
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02
THE THREAD · Full timeline
1 event, every row traceable.
A card accumulates records as its story develops: new corroborators, market contrasts, material changes at the original — each dated and linked to its archive day.
- RecordPre-orders opened: $399 introductory price, Apache-2.0 software stack, hardware not open sourced.
03
SOURCES · Sources and evidence
Check each link's purpose and limits.
Sources and evidence · 4 links
Each link has a purpose and scope. Link counts do not establish independent confirmation; direct support applies only to the statements specified below.
- Pollen Robotics official product page, The Register, and the Product Hunt feedScope not documented
A per-link statement of support has not been attached.
- Product Hunt featured listingScope not documented
A per-link statement of support has not been attached.
- The Register launch coverageScope not documented
A per-link statement of support has not been attached.
- r/LocalLLaMA discussionScope not documented
A per-link statement of support has not been attached.