Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots

Hugging Face has opened orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots, targeting AI developers interested in building and testing robotics applications. The company offers two versions: the Reachy Mini Wireless, priced at $449 and running on a Raspberry Pi 5, and the Reachy Mini Lite, a more affordable $299 model that requires an external computing source. These open-source robots come as kits for users to assemble themselves and feature programmable Python interfaces, two eye screens, and antennas. They integrate with Hugging Face’s open-source machine learning platform, providing access to over 1.7 million AI models and 400,000 datasets. The decision to launch two versions was influenced by user feedback, including a tester’s young child who wanted a portable robot, prompting the wireless model. Hugging Face emphasizes community-driven development, encouraging users to create, modify, and share custom features and applications. The Reachy Mini Lite is expected to ship next month, with the wireless version following later in the year.