Microduck brings open-source robotics to $399

Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics opened preorders for Microduck, a 25-centimeter, sub-800-gram biped with 15 motors at an introductory $399, Pollen says. Its software stack, simulator, SDK, and reinforcement-learning and sim-to-real tools are open source, and first deliveries are targeted before Christmas 2026; TechCrunch’s launch report says the robot can walk, recover from falls, and pick up objects. For robotics builders, $399 makes small-scale physical-AI experimentation cheaper to repeat, but it is a development platform—not evidence that sim-to-real behavior is solved; compare it with Unitree’s robot-sales math.