Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, said the Microduck is an 'open-source robot you can teach new tricks with reinforcement learning.' The 25-centimeter-tall duck can waddle, pick things up with its beak (up to 800 grams), get back up when it falls, crouch, and even roller skate. Hugging Face is best known as a platform and community where developers go for open model weights. However, the company acquired French startup Pollen Robotics in April 2025 to build affordable, open source AI hardware. A couple of months later, the two launched Reachy Mini, a small desktop robot. Today, they sell the $499 Reachy Mini, which is powered by a Raspberry Pi computer, and the $399 Reachy Mini Lite, powered by a Mac or PC. Pollen Robotics noted that the Microduck's behaviors can be trained in simulation and directly deployed on the robot. Developers can then fine-tune the bot, retrain it, and redeploy it. The SDK (software development kit), simulation, and full RL training stack are available on...
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