# Microduck: A 25 cm Biped You Can Retrain Yourself

> Pollen Robotics shipped a $399 open-source biped with seven RL policies in the box, MuJoCo training on your machine, and a sim-to-real path that actually works.

By [Ryan Porter](https://anth.us/ryan) · Published 2026-08-27

Canonical: https://anth.us/articles/microduck-open-source-biped/

::image{
  src="images/posts/microduck-open-source-biped.png"
  layout="center-small-image"
  alt="Pollen Robotics Microduck open-source biped robot"
}

[Pollen Robotics' Microduck](https://pollen-robotics.com/microduck/) is a 25 cm, 800 g biped that ships with seven trained behaviors, a game controller, and a full reinforcement-learning stack you can run on your own machine. Pre-orders are open at $399 for the base robot.

## Why it matters

The interesting part is not the duck shape. It is the workflow: train in MuJoCo, deploy with `robotctl`, refine the sim, publish the policy. Pollen put the SDK, simulation, and shipped policies on GitHub under Apache-2.0. Hugging Face Jobs is in the loop for training. That is a credible sim-to-real loop in a product you can actually buy, not a lab demo.

## Key technical notes

- **Hardware:** 15 motors, camera, LiDAR, two IMUs, 50 Hz onboard policy loop.
- **Out of the box:** walk, sit/stand, kick, grab, roller skating (with skates), and get-back-up from flat on its back.
- **Retrain path:** simulation on your machine or Hugging Face Jobs, then deploy to the physical robot and share policies with the community.
- **Ecosystem:** optional dev pack (spare motors, NFC tags, HF credit), accessory pack, and charger pack.

For teams building agentic or embodied systems, Microduck is a useful reference point: open policies, open sim, and a price that makes experimentation feasible without a full lab budget.