Hugging Face launches Microduck, a $399 open-source duck robot

Hugging Face introduced Microduck on Thursday, a small duck-like robot priced at $399 and set to ship before Christmas.

CEO Clem Delangue described it as an "open-source robot you can teach new tricks with reinforcement learning." The 25-centimetre robot can waddle, lift objects weighing up to 800 grams with its beak, get back up after falling, crouch and even roller skate. "Welcome to the era of open-source affordable robots to democratize physical AI and world models," Delangue said.

Hardware and developer stack

Microduck senses its surroundings using a camera, lidar sensors and two IMUs (inertial measurement units that track an object's movement). Pollen Robotics said the robot's behaviours can be trained in simulation and deployed directly on the device, after which developers can fine-tune, retrain and redeploy them. The SDK, the simulation environment and the full reinforcement learning training stack are published on GitHub.

Background

Best known as a platform for open model weights, Hugging Face acquired French startup Pollen Robotics in April 2025 to build affordable open-source AI hardware. The two later released Reachy Mini, a small desktop robot. The company currently sells the $499 Reachy Mini, powered by a Raspberry Pi, and the $399 Reachy Mini Lite, which runs off a Mac or PC.

Delangue previously told TechCrunch that robots running on open-source models are better for privacy than a "black box system" controlled by a handful of organisations. TechCrunch notes that while open source offers auditability and control, applications built on top of the model can still access the robot's cameras and microphones and send data to external services depending on how they are designed.

Full report at TechCrunch.