It waddles, snaps, and quacks: Microduck from French robot manufacturer Pollen Robotics. The biggest special feature is the price: The curious device costs, including shipping, only 440 euros, significantly less than “professional” robot models. However, Microduck is well-equipped: 15 actuators move its legs, head, neck, and beak, plus it has a front camera and a compact LiDAR (8x8 Time-of-Flight matrix), two IMUs, a sound system, a microphone, two NFC antennas, as well as WLAN and Bluetooth. A standard camera battery (NP-F550 with 2600 mAh) is used as the power source. The robot duck is said to last for an hour.
Pollen Robotics, which also offers a large, humanoid robot called Reachy 2, has been part of the machine learning platform Hugging Face since mid-2025 (is about to be acquired by Nvidia). Since then, the manufacturer has focused on low-cost robots; at the end of last year, for example, Reachy Mini was launched for 340 euros; a robot that performed quite well in the c’t-3003 test – the biggest criticism at the time was the lack of walking and gripping capabilities. Microduck addresses exactly these criticisms: The robot duck can walk (or rather waddle), and according to the promotional video, even roller skate and, at least rudimentarily, “grip”: namely, snap with its beak.
