Hugging Face has launched its Reachy Mini robots, now available for order. Designed for AI developers, researchers, and enthusiasts, the robots offer an exciting opportunity to experiment with human-robot interaction and AI applications.
The Reachy Mini is compact, measuring 11 inches in height and weighing just 3.3 pounds. It comes as a kit that users can assemble themselves, fostering a deeper understanding of the robot’s mechanics. The robot features motorized head and body rotations, animated antennas for expressiveness, and multimodal sensing capabilities, including a camera, microphones, and speakers. These features enable rich AI-powered audio-visual interactions, making Reachy Mini suitable for a wide range of AI development and research tasks.
Reachy Mini is fully programmable in Python, with future support for JavaScript and Scratch. The robot integrates with the Hugging Face Hub, which gives users access to over 1.7 million AI models and more than 400,000 datasets. This integration allows users to build, test, and deploy custom AI applications on the robot, making it a versatile tool for AI development.
Both versions of Reachy Mini offer a range of capabilities, but the Wireless version includes onboard computing, wireless connectivity, and a battery, while the Lite version requires an external computing source. Regardless of the version, Reachy Mini is designed for accessibility and ease of use, making it ideal for AI enthusiasts, students, and researchers of all skill levels.
Hugging Face’s approach to Reachy Mini aligns with its commitment to open-source technology. The robot’s hardware, software, and simulation environments are all open-source, which means that users can extend, modify, and share their own robot behaviors. The community-driven approach encourages innovation and collaboration, with users able to contribute to the growing library of robot behaviors and features.
The community feedback reflects enthusiasm, curiosity, and constructive critique, with a focus on its affordability, open-source nature, and potential for AI and robotics development.
System Design & AI Architect Marcel Butucea commented:
Reachy Mini robot ships as a DIY kit & integrates w/ their AI model hub! Could this open-source approach, like Linux for robots, democratize robotics dev?
Meanwhile Clement Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face posted:
Everyone will be able to build all sorts of apps thanks to the integrations with Lerobot & Hugging Face.
The Reachy Mini Lite is expected to begin shipping in late summer 2025, with the Wireless version rolling out in batches later in the year. Hugging Face is focused on getting the robots into the hands of users quickly to gather feedback and continuously improve the product.
