Hugging Face has introduced Microduck, a 25-centimeter open-source robot priced at $399. The duck-shaped machine can waddle, crouch, get back up after a fall, roller skate and lift objects weighing up to 800 grams with its beak. The company says orders will ship before Christmas.
A camera, lidar sensors and two inertial measurement units help the robot perceive its surroundings and track movement. Developers can train behavior in simulation and deploy it directly to the hardware, then fine-tune, retrain and redeploy their changes. Hugging Face and its Pollen Robotics unit have published the software development kit, simulator and reinforcement-learning stack on GitHub.
The open stack gives owners more ability to inspect and change the software than a closed consumer robot, but it does not guarantee privacy. Applications installed on top can still access cameras or microphones and may send data to outside services. Buyers will need to review each application’s permissions and network behavior, particularly if the robot operates in bedrooms or other private spaces.