Hugging Face’s Microduck Feels Like a Harbinger of the Cute AI Robot Wave

I hadn’t been paying a ton of attention to the robot beat lately, but an adorable waddling duck robot caught my eye this morning and changed all that. The Microduck, a collab between hot AI tool hub Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics, can be yours for $399. I can’t stop thinking about it now.

It took me right back to my coverage of adorable toy robots in the 2010s. Sphero’s programmable rolling balls and Star Wars bots, or the Wall-E-like Anki Cozmo. The Microduck is Pollen’s second Hugging Face robot collaboration, the first being a sedentary robot called Reachy Mini.

The mobile Microduck looks like Disney’s waddling Nvidia-powered BDX droids crossed with Untitled Goose Game. It’s got little legs, a camera eye and a “beak” mouth/grabber that can pick things up and carry them around. It can skate around with wheels on its feet? There are IMU motion-tracking sensors and a depth sensor, too.

According to Pollen, it’ll work on its own as a robot toy. It can be controlled with a gamepad, responds to laser pointers and can explore environments. But emergent behaviors and AI training are part of the purpose for this existing in the first place. It’s a way to test AI and robotics in a little toy form.

I used to love those promising little robot toys that Sphero and others made, because they were fun to experiment with, but emergent behavior wasn’t always possible then.

The Microduck will apparently have its own sounds, in its own voice, and can interact with other Microducks, each with its own voice. I’m already curious. 

But I also wonder how many other companies are going to rapidly flex into cute AI-enabled robot tech. OpenAI is expected to have some sort of moving robotic speaker-camera thing. Apple may be making a semirobotic HomePod. And will all those robot toymakers be looping back around with AI trainable kits soon, if they aren’t already?

The Microduck can be preordered now and is promised for end-of-year delivery (around Christmas, per Pollen Robotics) in North America, the UK and Europe. I have to admit I want one.

Scott Stein

Editor at Large

I started with CNET reviewing laptops in 2009. Now I explore wearable tech, VR/AR, tablets, gaming and future/emerging trends in our changing world. Other obsessions include magic, immersive theater, puzzles, board games, cooking, improv and the New York Jets. My background includes an MFA in theater which I apply to thinking about immersive experiences of the future.

See full bio