Hugging Face's Bordeaux robotics team, Pollen Robotics, has unveiled Microduck, an open-source biped robot retailing at $399. Standing just 25 centimeters tall, the machine is equipped with 15 motors, a camera, LiDAR, two IMUs, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, and a compute platform based on the Rockchip RK3566. All of its actions—walking, sitting, kicking a ball, roller-skating, and standing up after a fall—are learned through reinforcement learning as neural policies in a physical simulator, and can be exported directly to the hardware. The project opens up the training environment, reward functions, domain randomization settings, and the simulation-to-real scheme on GitHub. Users can train locally on a GPU using a framework built on MuJoCo Warp and PPO, obtaining a usable gait in about one to two hours, or use Hugging Face Jobs for cloud-based runs. The robot comes with seven pre-trained behaviors and supports hot-swapping of policies. Pre-orders began on August 27, 2026, with shipments planned before Christmas. While the software is released under Apache-2.0, the mechanical and electronic design files remain closed. (MarkTechPost)
Techub News — Pollen Robotics, the Bordeaux robotics team under Hugging Face, has launched Microduck, an open-source bipedal robot priced at $399. Standing 25 cm tall, it packs 15 motors, a camera, LiDAR, two IMUs, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, and a compute platform built around the Rockchip RK3566.
Every movement — walking, sitting, kicking a ball, roller-skating, and standing up after a fall — comes from neural policies trained with reinforcement learning in a physics simulator, then exported to the hardware. The training environment, reward functions, domain randomization settings, and the sim-to-real pipeline are all public on GitHub. Users can train on a local GPU with a framework built on MuJoCo Warp and PPO, yielding a usable gait in roughly 1-2 hours, or run it in the cloud via Hugging Face Jobs.
The robot ships with seven pre-trained behaviors and supports hot-swapping of policies. Pre-orders opened on August 27, 2026, with delivery targeted before Christmas. Software is under the Apache-2.0 license, but the mechanical and electrical design files are not open-sourced. (MarkTechPost)
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