Hugging Face has announced the start of pre-orders for its new desktop robots, the Reachy Mini.

Two models are available: the Reachy Mini Wireless, priced at US$449, and the Reachy Mini Lite, priced at US$299.

The Reachy Mini robots are open-source and come as a kit for developers to assemble and program.

They are designed to be programmable in Python and integrate with Hugging Face’s platform, providing access to various AI models and datasets.

The Wireless version operates on a Raspberry Pi 5, while the Lite version requires a separate computing source.

CEO Clém Delangue said the design was shaped by early developer feedback.

The Lite version ships next month, and the Wireless model later this year.

🔗 Source: TechCrunch

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Hugging Face’s strategy follows the democratization pattern established by ROS

Hugging Face’s open-source approach to Reachy Mini parallels the impact of the Robot Operating System (ROS), which transformed robotics development starting in 2009.

ROS emerged to address the problem of robotics developers spending significant time rewriting existing code rather than creating new applications 1.

This open-source framework grew from an academic project at Stanford to become the industry standard, attracting contributors and enabling innovation across the robotics ecosystem 2.

By offering open-source hardware with Python programmability, Hugging Face is applying this democratization pattern to physical robots, potentially fostering community-driven development.

The company’s emphasis on user control reflects the principles of ROS, which sought to eliminate repetitive coding and create shared infrastructure benefiting the robotics community.

2️⃣ Strategic acquisition enables vertical integration of AI and robotics