Hugging Face’s $399 Microduck robot is tiny, open-source and oddly alive
Pollen Robotics’ new bipedal robot can pick up objects, sing, follow a laser pointer and learn new movements.
Hugging Face’s Pollen Robotics has opened pre-orders for Microduck, a small one-eyed AI robot priced at $399 and planned to ship before Christmas.
The bipedal robot is less than 25.4cm tall and comes in cream, graphite, lavender and sky blue. Demonstrations show it picking up socks and markers, kicking a ball and moving on tiny roller skates.
A robot with a personality
Microduck can react to its surroundings, follow a laser pointer and be controlled directly with a gamepad. It also has a camera, movement sensors and lidar, with movable legs, head and neck.
Each robot receives a unique voice when it starts for the first time. Pollen Robotics says the strange little sounds are intended to feel more like a living creature than a conventional assistant.
Open-source by design
The software follows the open approach used by Hugging Face’s Reachy Mini. Owners can retrain Microduck to learn new movements, making it more of a robotics platform than a sealed toy.
The hardware uses a Rockchip RK3566 processor and is offered as a pre-order product rather than a mass-market home assistant.
Our opinion
Microduck is the rare AI gadget that looks like it might actually be fun before someone explains its benchmark score. At $399, it is still a serious impulse purchase, but at least the impulse is aimed at a robot that can do something besides turn a light bulb on.
The open-source angle is the important part. If owners can teach it new behaviours and share those experiments, Microduck could become a friendly gateway into robotics rather than another disposable novelty.
The unique voice is either charming or the first step towards a household full of tiny creatures demanding names. Frankly, that is a risk worth taking.