Microduck: $399 Open‑Source Robot Duck Enables Reinforcement‑Learning AI on Real Hardware

Hugging Face’s open‑source AI community was acquired by NVIDIA for $12.9 billion, and its subsidiary Pollen Robotics has released the Microduck robot, a 25 cm tall, 800 g duck‑shaped platform priced at $399.

Microduck is designed as a testbed that brings AI models from the digital world to physical hardware. It runs a full open‑source stack—including a control‑system SDK, simulation environment, and reinforcement‑learning training pipeline—available on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license.

The robot’s hardware features 1 GB RAM, 32 GB onboard storage, a 50 Hz control loop, a front‑facing camera, built‑in LiDAR for distance sensing, microphone and speaker for voice output, dual NFC antennas, Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and a removable 2600 mAh battery providing about one hour of operation.

Developers can train new behaviors in the simulated environment using reinforcement learning, then deploy the learned policies to the physical robot with a single click. Demonstrations show the robot picking up socks and markers with its flexible beak, placing them into a box, and even rolling on wheels with optional accessories.

According to product manager Santiago Pafón, the goal is to make building AI on real hardware as easy as running a model, encouraging the community to contribute autonomous capabilities such as voice recognition, SLAM, navigation, and grasping—though the small size limits payload to roughly 100 g.

Github address: pollen-robotics/microduck