Microduck - ROBOTS: Your Guide to the World of Robotics

Microduck is a small biped robot with a distinctly ducklike waddle. Using AI skills, it can walk, sit, roller-skate, pick up objects with its beak, recover from falls, and quack in its own voice. Designed for developers, researchers, and robotics enthusiasts, it ships assembled, uses open-source software tools, and offers a playful platform for training, testing, and sharing new behaviors.
Part of Hugging Face
According to Pollen Robotics, no ducks were harmed in the making of Microduck—several were consulted.
Microduck was created by Pollen Robotics, a robotics company based in Bordeaux, France. Pollen was founded in 2016 by former robotics researchers from French R&D center Inria, including Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre Rouanet. The team's earlier work included Poppy, Reachy, and Reachy Mini.
AI model repository company Hugging Face acquired Pollen in April 2025, and Pollen became its robotics team. In August 2026, Nvidia was reportedly in talks to acquire Hugging Face for US $12.9 billion.
Announced in August 2026, Microduck is Pollen's second consumer robot after Reachy Mini. It stands 25 centimeters tall, weighs only 780 grams, and its movements are driven by 15 motors. According to the robot's specs, sensors include a wide angle front camera, time-of-flight lidar, two inertial measurement units—one in its body and one in its head—plus microphones and two NFC readers. With a controller equipped with built-in behaviors, Microduck can walk, sit, crouch, kick, pick up small objects with its beak, and recover from falls. It can also roller-skate when fitted with the optional accessory.
Microduck is intended for developers, robotics researchers, students, educators, and creators who want to explore physical AI on a small robot. Its AI skills can be used to control movement and interactivity, and are trained through reinforcement learning in a MuJoCo simulation and then transferred to the real robot. Users can retrain these AI policies, test new behaviors, and share their work with other developers. The SDK, onboard software, and reinforcement-learning tools are available in open source repositories.
As of September 2026, Microduck remained available for preorder at an introductory price of US $399 before taxes and shipping. Pollen Robotics was targeting its first deliveries before Christmas 2026, but strong demand meant newer orders could take four to six months. The company said it was increasing production, with the next stage focused on getting robots into users' hands and helping the community create, improve, and share new behaviors.
Can be configured from a computer over Bluetooth and controlled over Wi-Fi. Streams live video from its camera. Runs its movement software on board without relying on a cloud connection. Developers can install and test custom software directly on the robot. Built-in tools provide status information and logs for troubleshooting.
pollen-robotics.com/microduck
Wide-angle front camera; lidar depth sensor; two inertial measurement units (IMUs), one in the body and one in the head; microphones; and two NFC tag readers (one in the head and one in the beak).
15 Dynamixel XL330 servo motors: five in each leg, four in the neck and head, and one in the beak.
Metal and plastic materials, available with cream, graphite, lavender, or sky blue outer shells.
Rockchip RK3566 processor with an AI accelerator, 1 GB RAM, and 32 GB storage. Built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Open-source robot control software and software development kit. MuJoCo advanced physics simulator. Reinforcement learning training scripts and tools, including a tested sim-to-real AI skill transfer workflow.
Removable 2,600 mAh NP-F550 battery, about 1 hour of operation