f you spotted the small bipedal machines sharing the stage with Jensen Huang at GTC Berlin on October 21, you were looking at Pollen Robotics’ $399 programmable robot. These devices first opened for preorders on August 27, carrying a price tag of $399 before taxes and shipping. For that sum, according to the manufacturer's specifications, you get a 10-inch-tall mechanism packed with 15 motors, an articulated beak, and a removable camera-style battery.
The box delivers the robot itself, a battery, a USB-C cable, and a game controller. Should you remember demonstrations involving rollers or a laser pointer, be warned that those extras are missing from the base package and require a separate accessory pack. Beneath the four shell colors of Cream, Graphite, Lavender, and Sky, every unit is identical. The removable NP-F550 battery inside delivers roughly an hour of runtime, depending entirely on how hard you push the motors.
The programming hurdle
Before you expect a clever household pet that cleans the floor or fetches your keys, look at the software reality. As Pollen Robotics outlined, the software stack is open, but the mechanical and electronic design files remain closed. Owners can script behaviors in a virtual environment before transferring them to the physical duck, utilizing software tools built for robot control, simulation, and reinforcement learning.
Microduck is a development and experimentation platform recommended for ages 16 and up.
Local training with the current reinforcement learning tools demands a CUDA GPU, while Hugging Face Jobs serves as the cloud alternative. That heavy computing power is not included in your $399 purchase. You can certainly use the game controller and built-in behaviors straight out of the box without setting up any training workflows, but that turns a serious development platform into a very pricey remote-controlled toy.
The reality of the wait
Anyone hoping to wrap one of these up as a quick holiday surprise faces a harsh reality check. The current preorder page estimates a four-to-six-month delivery window for new orders, meaning no Christmas arrivals for latecomers. If you are an adult or older teen genuinely interested in learning robotics, the included controller offers a straightforward way to explore movements before opening up any code. But if you just want a finished gadget that arrives by next Tuesday for a gift, the timeline and the intended use point you firmly toward the exit.