Hugging Face’s new robot is an adorable rollerskating duck

Hugging Face’s Pollen Robotics has launched its second cute AI robot, the Microduck, a one-eyed biped standing just under 10 inches tall. It’s available to preorder now for $399 in cream, graphite, lavender, and sky blue, and Pollen Robotics says it plans to start shipping the little robot “before Christmas 2026.”

Video demos of the Microduck show it picking up socks and markers, kicking around a ball, and zipping around on tiny rollerskates. Pollen Robotics says it can also “react to its surroundings” and follow around a laser pointer, or users can control it with a game controller. The Microduck’s software is open-source, like Hugging Face’s previous Reachy Mini robot, so users can also retrain it to do new tricks.

The Microduck can sing, too, and Pollen Robotics says each one has its own sound: “it communicates through weird little sounds, closer to a creature than an assistant. Each Microduck gets its own audio identity the first time it wakes up, tied to that individual robot so it keeps the same voice for life.” It runs on a Rockchip RK3566 processor and has a camera, motion sensors, LiDAR, and articulated legs, head, and neck.