Apparently, a lot of people want a nearly 10-inch-tall robot duck.
On Friday, Hugging Face cofounder Thomas Wolf wrote in a post on X that customers placed more than $2.6 million worth of orders for Microduck during its first 24 hours on sale. The update came after Wolf said on Thursday, roughly six hours after the product was announced, that preorders had already topped $1 million.
The $399 Microduck was unveiled Thursday by Pollen Robotics, the French robotics company Hugging Face acquired last year, with a goal for first deliveries around Christmastime. The companies didn’t immediately respond to requests for more information about the orders.
Now, there might be a bit of a backlog.
“The community ordered a lot of ducks,” a red banner at the top of the company’s checkout page reads. “We can’t promise Christmas delivery for new microduck orders anymore, but we’re ramping up production. First ordered, first shipped. Current estimate for new orders: 4—6 months.”
It’s part of a broader effort to bring AI out of chatbots and into consumer-focused machines that can do more than vacuum floors.
AI-powered robots have so far largely been confined to research labs and factory floors. Now, companies including Tesla and 1X are plotting how robots could make the leap into consumers’ homes, while Hyundai floats the idea of selling robots through its car dealerships.
Microduck is Pollen’s second consumer robot, following the square-headed Reachy Mini, an assembly-required desktop robot that users can program to hold AI-powered conversations or wiggle its antennas. Both products are aimed at developers and robotics enthusiasts.
Hugging Face says the two-legged, one-eyed Microduck is similarly programmable — but unlike its desktop-dwelling predecessor, it can waddle around. Out of the box, the ducklike bot can walk, sit, stand, kick a tiny soccer ball, and pick up small objects with its plastic mandible. It can also get back on its feet after falling over and, with rollers from a separate $39 accessory pack, skate around.
Those tricks are the starting point that users can build on. Developers can train new movements through trial and error using a virtual Microduck in a physics simulator, then transfer the resulting behavior to the physical robot.
For example, on Friday, Clément Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, posted a video of the little bot doing some gymnastics that a user trained.
Other videos show the duck picking up small objects like a marker or a stray sock.
After training a new movement, developers can export it as an ONNX file, deploy it on their robot, and, Pollen says, “share your new behavior with the community.” The robot also has a camera, lidar, and two motion sensors that developers can access when building their own software.
The duck runs for around an hour on a removable, rechargeable battery, depending on how it’s used.
Microduck’s reportedly successful debut comes at a consequential moment for its parent company. A day before the robot was unveiled, Business Insider reported that chipmaker Nvidia was in talks to acquire Hugging Face in a deal that could value the AI startup at more than $13 billion.
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