A new budget-friendly robot arriving later this year will let owners program it with new tricks.
The $399 biped robot comes from Hugging Face, a company best known for hosting open-source and open-weight AI models. Hugging Face’s Pollen Robotics arm developed the Microduck, which weighs 1.8 pounds and stands 9.8 inches tall. The bot contains 15 motors, a microphone and speaker, a camera, LiDAR, and two motion sensors, along with a beak for picking up objects.
The bot moves by waddling. A video shows the Microduck can walk, get up on its own, grab objects like your clothes, kick a ball, and even roller skate if you buy the attachable skates. Importantly, Microduck comes with seven pre-built capabilities out of the box, making it easy for consumers to use. The robot can also be controlled with the included game controller.
Microduck can also “follow a laser dot, trigger movements, or let it react to its surroundings. The point is to make the first interaction immediate, even if you never write code,” Hugging Face wrote in a blog post.
But the bot’s real selling point is its programmability. “The same robot becomes a complete development platform,” Hugging Face explains. “Its open-source software stack covers robot control, simulation, reinforcement learning, and sim-to-real deployment."
The software is available today: the main Microduck repository contains the SDK and robot software, while Microduck RL contains the reinforcement learning and sim-to-real tools, Hugging Face says.
As a result, Microduck should be able to learn new tricks through trial and error. Software developers also use the bot to "test how AI moves from simulation into the real world," the company adds.
Hugging Face plans on sharing more about the software development aspect, but for now, the company says, “The important point is that the behaviors shipping with Microduck are not meant to define what the robot can do forever. They are a starting point.”
For memory, the Microduck features 1GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The bot also supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and comes with two NFC antennas. On the downside, Microduck’s battery life is estimated at about 1 hour with the 2,600mAh battery. Preorders for the Microduck are already open. “First deliveries targeted before Christmas 2026,” the site says. The product is currently only available in the US and Europe.
The launch comes after reports that Nvidia is acquiring Hugging Face for an estimated $12.9 billion. Last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella released a public letter championing open-weight AI models. “The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models,” Huang wrote in his first post on X.