Hugging Face’s Microduck Feels Like a Harbinger of the Cute AI Robot Wave - CNET

Our gifting experts are obsessively searching for holiday gifts that are unique, thoughtful and suitable for any budget. Our expert, award-winning staff selects the products we cover and rigorously researches and tests our top picks. If you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. It waddles… it roller-skates… it plays ball… it learns. I hadn’t been paying a ton of attention to the robot beat lately, but an adorable waddling duck robot caught my eye this morning and changed all that. The Microduck, a collab between hot AI tool hub Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics, can be yours for $399. I can’t stop thinking about it now. It took me right back to my coverage of adorable toy robots in the 2010s. Sphero’s programmable rolling balls and Star Wars bots, or the Wall-E-like Anki Cozmo. The Microduck is Pollen’s second Hugging Face robot collaboration, the first being a sedentary robot called Reachy Mini. The mobile Microduck looks like Disney’s waddling Nvidia-powered BDX droids crossed with Untitled Goose Game. It’s got little legs, a camera eye and a “beak” mouth/grabber that can pick things up and carry them around. It can skate around with wheels on its feet? There are IMU mo