Hugging Face Unveils Microduck: A $399 Open-Source 25 cm Biped You Train with Reinforcement LearningMichal Sutter writes about Pollen Robotics, a Bordeaux-based team at Hugging Face, which has opened pre-orders for Microduck, a 25 cm bipedal robot priced at $399. Unlike most robotics launches that rely on demo videos, Microduck ships with its full training loop — every movement (walking, sitting, kicking, roller-skating, self-recovery) is a neural policy trained in a physics simulator and exported to hardware. The robot carries 15 motors, a camera, LiDAR, two IMUs, and a Rockchip RK3566, with policies trained via PPO in MuJoCo Warp in roughly one to two hours on a CUDA GPU.
- Sim-to-real hinges on a BAM actuator model (voltage control law, back-EMF, Coulomb/Stribeck/load-dependent friction) plus randomization of battery voltage, command delay, and ±1° backlash per joint
- Every policy shares a 61-dimensional actor observation (48 proprioception + twist, head pose, body pose commands), enabling hot-swap between walk, recover, and trick policies mid-run
- Software is Apache-2.0, but mechanical and electronic design files are not open
- The robot generates a unique audio identity on first wake that persists permanently; it does not speak in a linguistic sense
- Pre-orders opened August 27, 2026, with deliveries targeted before Christmas
- Sim-to-real hinges on a BAM actuator model (voltage control law, back-EMF, Coulomb/Stribeck/load-dependent friction) plus randomization of battery voltage, command delay, and ±1° backlash per joint
- Every policy shares a 61-dimensional actor observation (48 proprioception + twist, head pose, body pose commands), enabling hot-swap between walk, recover, and trick policies mid-run
- Software is Apache-2.0, but mechanical and electronic design files are not open
- The robot generates a unique audio identity on first wake that persists permanently; it does not speak in a linguistic sense
- Pre-orders opened August 27, 2026, with deliveries targeted before Christmas
