Hugging Face is selling a cute $399 open source duck robot, Microduck
techcrunch ·
Hugging Face unveiled the Microduck on Thursday, a $399 open-source duck-like robot that ships before Christmas. The 25-centimeter-tall robot can waddle, pick up objects up to 800 grams with its beak, get up after falling, crouch, and roller skate. It uses a camera, lidar sensors, and two IMUs to perceive its environment. The robot's behaviors can be trained in simulation and deployed directly, with its SDK, simulation, and reinforcement learning stack available on GitHub. Hugging Face entered the hardware space after acquiring French startup Pollen Robotics in April 2025, which also sells the Reachy Mini robots. The launch follows reports that Hugging Face may be acquired by Nvidia at a $13 billion valuation, and comes after a recent cybersecurity incident involving OpenAI. Privacy concerns exist because while open source offers auditability, third-party apps built on the robot could access its cameras and microphones and send data externally.
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