Microduck: A 25 cm open-source biped robot you train with reinforcement learning
Pollen Robotics (Hugging Face) Microduck
Pollen Robotics, in collaboration with Hugging Face, introduces Microduck, a 25 cm open-source biped robot that you can train yourself using reinforcement learning. It comes with seven pre-trained behaviors, including walking, sitting, kicking, and even roller skating, and is designed to be playable out of the box. The robot features a camera, LiDAR, and two IMUs, and runs policies at 50 Hz. The entire software stack, including the SDK, simulation, and RL training stack, is open source on GitHub under Apache-2.0. Pre-orders are open for $399, with shipping expected before Christmas 2026.
Every behaviour is a policy you can retrain on your own machine.
- unixhero
The Sony Aibo we never got
- lambda
Tried out the simulator and was surprised to find that the movement keys are ZQSD; then realized that's the equivalent of WASD on an AZERTY keyboard. Checked and sure enough, Pollen Robotics is a French company.
They may want to at least add a preference for keyboard layout, pretty sure that QWERTY and QWERTZ are much more common worldwide than AZERTY.
- _joel
It's either this or https://mondorobotics.com/ and I'm torn. Obviously it's for my daughter and I will just be safety checking, definitely, 100%.
- prometheus1992
Not sure many people know this - most of the robotics stuff that you see in the news is based on MujoCo (Multi-Joint dynamics with Contact) engine, that is used primarily to create simulated environments in which these robots learn the RL policies. This project is maintained by Google deepmind - https://github.com/google-deepmind/mujoco
- trebligdivad
Oh so this is why Nvidia (edit: trying to buy)/bought Hugging Face, $1B for all the ai sharing and stuff, and $12B for the duck!
- telecuda
It doesn't walk like a duck, but Reachy Mini by HF/Pollen Robotics is a great entry-level robot. And you get to assemble it!
Direct links:
- baddash
thought this said something else at first
- NalNezumi
Surprised with the price, a similar form factor that I know of is even more expensive https://shop.xgorobot.com/products/xgo-rider-world-s-first-d...
(Chinese but since it's esp32 and raspberry pi it is possible to tinker with it)
I wonder what's the catch? Cheap IMU/motors?