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Hugging Face Rolls Out Reachy Mini Robots for Developers and Makers

Hugging Face Rolls Out Reachy Mini Robots for Developers and Makers

Reachy Mini robot on desk with screen eyes and antennae assembled.

Hugging Face has officially opened orders for its new Reachy Mini desktop robots, inviting developers to begin building and experimenting. First introduced as prototypes in May, the Reachy Mini models are part of a broader vision to make robotics more open and accessible.

Two options are now available. The Reachy Mini Wireless, priced at $449, runs on a Raspberry Pi 5 and operates without wires. On the other hand, the Reachy Mini Lite must remain connected to a computing source but offers a lower price point of $299. Notably, both models come in kit form and are fully open source, encouraging developers to customize them from the ground up.

Although compact roughly the size of a stuffed animal each Reachy Mini features dual screen “eyes” and antennae. Once assembled, the robots are fully programmable in Python. Additionally, they include built-in demos and seamless integration with the Hugging Face Hub, which offers access to over 1.7 million models and more than 400,000 datasets.

Community Feedback Shapes Development

Hugging Face CEO Clém Delangue explained that feedback on the prototypes significantly shaped the final product lineup. For example, one early tester noted that their young daughter wanted to carry the robot throughout the house. This insight inspired the creation of the wireless version.

“The goal in the future is to keep carefully getting a lot of feedback like that from users, from the community; that’s how we’ve always been building products at Hugging Face as an open source community platform,” Delangue said. “By the nature of it being open source, it means that people will be able to extend it, modify it, change everything they want.”

Furthermore, Delangue emphasized that open collaboration has always driven Hugging Face’s product strategy. As a result, the company prioritizes giving users creative freedom.

A Vision for Open Source Robotics

Targeted at AI developers, the Reachy Mini line aims to support coding, building, and testing right on the desktop. Delangue believes that the product will fuel innovation by allowing creators to share applications within the community.

“Anyone will be able to build their own specific features and apps for Reachy Mini that then they’ll be able to share with the community,” Delangue said. “So we hope that it’s really going to unleash the creativity of builders to build, you know, millions of different applications, millions of different features that they can share with the community, so that anyone can then, like, plug and play with it.”

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The Reachy Mini Lite is expected to ship next month, while the wireless version will follow later in the year. Importantly, Delangue noted that the company avoided lengthy preorder delays to ensure users can begin working with the robots quickly.

Delangue also stressed that Hugging Face is committed to keeping its robotics program open source. According to him, this approach is critical for a future in which users not corporations retain control over the devices in their homes.

“I feel like it’s really important for the future of robotics to be open source, instead of being closed source, black box, [and] concentrated in the hands of a few companies,” Delangue said. “I think it’s quite a scary world to have like millions of robots in people’s home controlled by one company, with customers, users, not really being able to control them, understand them. I would much rather live in a place, or in a world, or in a country, where everyone can have some control over the robots.

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