The Hugging Face Microduck, a $399 open-source robot shaped like a duck, is now available to pre-order. The 25cm robot ships before Christmas and can be taught new tricks with reinforcement learning.
What is the Hugging Face Microduck?
The Microduck waddles, crouches, picks things up with its beak and gets back up after falling over. Fitted with the accessory rollers, it can skate. Seven behaviours come trained out of the box.
The robot is built by Pollen Robotics, the French startup Hugging Face acquired in April 2025, and follows the Reachy Mini desktop bots in the company’s push into affordable open-source hardware. The launch was announced on 27 August by TechCrunch.
“Welcome to the era of open-source affordable robots to democratize physical AI and world models!”
Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face
Teaching the duck new tricks
The Microduck sees the world through a camera, lidar and two inertial measurement units, and runs its behaviour loop at 50Hz across 15 motors. Behaviours are trained in a physics simulation, then deployed straight onto the robot; owners can fine-tune, retrain and redeploy them.
The SDK, the simulation and the full reinforcement-learning training stack are published on GitHub under an Apache-2.0 licence. A trick learned on the robot can be shared back with the community as a downloadable policy.
Price and availability
Pre-orders opened on 27 August at $399 before taxes and shipping, with delivery before Christmas. Four colourways are available. The robot ships with a battery, USB-C cable and game controller; a dual charger and two spare batteries cost $39, the dev pack with spare motors and NFC tags costs $119, and an accessory pack with rollers, a ball and a laser pointer costs $39. Full details are on the Pollen Robotics Microduck page.
What this means for the UAE
Hugging Face has not confirmed UAE pricing or shipping, and the $399 figure converts to roughly AED 1,465 before taxes and shipping. The open-source approach has local precedent: Abu Dhabi’s TII is building industrial robots on similar principles. Hugging Face is also part of Nvidia after the $12.9 billion acquisition, and the Microduck is the consumer end of that bet.
What is the Hugging Face Microduck?
A 25cm open-source robot shaped like a duck, priced at $399. It waddles, picks things up with its beak and roller-skates, and owners can train new behaviours with reinforcement learning.
When does the Microduck ship?
Pre-orders opened on 27 August 2026 with delivery before Christmas. The $399 price is before taxes and shipping.
How do you train a Microduck?
Behaviours are trained in a physics simulation and deployed directly onto the robot. The SDK, simulation and full training stack are published on GitHub under an Apache-2.0 licence.
