GoKawiilThe Microduck robot is set to come with a range of pre-installed actions, according to its developers HuggingFace and Pollen Robotics.
BEIJING — A popular new programmable personal robot from a French-American company is powered by a chip from Shanghai-listed Rockchip which in turn uses British company ARM's tech, reflecting how intertwined global tech supply chains remain.
The colorful "Microduck" robot from Hugging Face's French subsidiary Pollen Robotics has sold more than 10,000 units since its launch on Thursday — earning over $4 million based on the $399 unit price. That's quickly delayed delivery times for new orders past the initial promise of Christmas 2026.
The duck-shaped robots contain their own set of sensors, motors and on-device computing power from Rockchip's RK3566. The chip incorporates technology licensed from British semiconductor company ARM , according to Rockchip.
The Chinese company is a "key vendor" for AI that operates on devices, rather than in the cloud, said Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at Omdia. He noted the company's chips are commonly used for machine vision involving object detection and image recognition.
"While it has massive footprint, the company chips are not designed for complex edge AI devices as they lack the compute resources," Su said. Such computing capabilities can allow smartphones, robots and other electronic devices to run generative AI tools securely without sharing data on the internet.
Rockchip last month reported a 40% year-on-year increase in operating revenue in the first half of the year to 2.88 billion yuan ($428 million), while net profit excluding one-time items surged by more than 60%.
The 1.76 pound (800g) Microduck is both an interactive consumer toy and a development platform. Using open-source software, it can supposedly learn from virtual simulations and goal-driven directions.