Hugging Face Launches $299 Robot That Could Disrupt Entire Robotics Industry

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Hugging Face, the $4.5 billion artificial intelligence platform that has become the GitHub of machine learning, announced Tuesday the launch of Reachy Mini, a $299 desktop robot designed to bring AI-powered robotics to millions of developers worldwide. The 11-inch humanoid companion represents the company's boldest move yet to democratize robotics development and challenge the industry's traditional closed-source, high-cost model.

The announcement comes as Hugging Face crosses a significant milestone of 10 million AI builders using its platform, with CEO Clement Delangue revealing in an exclusive interview that 'more and more of them are building in relation to robotics.' The compact robot, which can sit on any desk next to a laptop, addresses what Delangue calls a fundamental barrier in robotics development: accessibility. 'One of the challenges with robotics is that you know you can't just build on your laptop. You need to have some sort of robotics partner to help in your building, and most people won't be able to buy $70,000 robots,' Delangue explained, referring to traditional industrial robotics systems and even newer humanoid robots like Tesla's Optimus, which is expected to cost $20,000-$30,000.

Reachy Mini emerges from Hugging Face's April acquisition of French robotics startup Pollen Robotics, marking the company's most significant hardware expansion since its founding. The robot represents the first consumer product to integrate natively with the Hugging Face Hub, allowing developers to access thousands of pre-built AI models and share robotics applications through the platform's 'Spaces' feature. Reachy Mini packs sophisticated capabilities into its compact form factor. The robot features six degrees of freedom in its moving head, full body rotation, animated antennas, a wide-angle camera, multiple microphones, and a 5-watt speaker. The wireless version includes a Raspberry Pi 5 computer and battery, making it fully autonomous. The robot ships as a DIY kit and can be programmed in Python, with JavaScript and Scratch support planned. Pre-installed demonstration applications include face and hand tracking, smart companion features, and dancing moves. Developers can create and share new applications through Hugging Face's Spaces platform, potentially creating what Delangue envisions as 'thousands, tens of thousands, millions of apps.' Reachy Mini's $299 price point could significantly transform robotics education and research. 'Universities, coding bootcamps, and individual learners could use the platform to explore robotics concepts without requiring expensive laboratory equipment,' reports VentureBeat. 'The open-source nature enables educational institutions to modify hardware and software to suit specific curricula. Students could progress from basic programming exercises to sophisticated AI applications using the same platform, potentially accelerating robotics education and workforce development.'

'... For the first time, a major AI platform is betting that the future of robotics belongs not in corporate research labs, but in the hands of millions of individual developers armed with affordable, open-source tools.'

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