Hugging Face's $399 open-source robot

Reachy Mini is an open-source desktop robot kit developed by Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics, priced from $399. Designed for human-robot interaction and creative tinkering, it gives builders an expressive physical companion on their desk that hooks straight into open-source AI models for vision, speech, and movement.

Sold as a DIY kit, the robot stands 11 inches tall (about 9 inches in sleep mode), measures 6.3 inches wide, and weighs 3.3 pounds. It features a motorized head with 6 degrees of freedom, full body rotation, two animated antennas, a wide-angle camera, microphones, a 5W speaker, and an accelerometer.

What it can do

The goal of Reachy Mini is to bring multimodal models out of the browser and onto your desk. You can program it to track objects, hold voice conversations, react with expressive head and antenna gestures, or act as an interactive coding assistant.

At launch, Hugging Face provides over 15 plug-and-play robot behaviors directly on the Hugging Face Hub. Because it integrates with the existing Hub infrastructure, users can download, modify, and share new physical behaviors just like open-source models.

Development is handled via an open-source Python SDK, with JavaScript and Scratch support planned down the road. If you don't have the hardware yet, an included simulation SDK lets you code, simulate, and debug your behaviors on your computer before the physical robot even arrives.

Hardware specs and setup

The hardware comes in two tiers. The $399 Reachy Mini Lite requires tethering to an external Mac or Linux computer for compute, with Windows support promised soon.

The $499 autonomous edition packs an onboard Raspberry Pi 4, wireless connectivity, and a built-in battery, allowing the robot to sit and operate untethered on your desk. Both tiers ship under DAP terms, meaning buyers cover local taxes and shipping.

On the privacy side, Reachy Mini does not store or transmit user data by default, and sensors operate strictly under local user control. Keep in mind that this is still early-stage hardware, shared as-is without standard consumer warranties.

Why it matters

Robotics and embodied AI have traditionally suffered from a brutal barrier to entry, requiring thousands of dollars for decent servo hardware and reliable kinematics. At $399, Reachy Mini makes expressive, sensor-equipped robotics accessible to indie hackers, classrooms, and small labs.

We think Hugging Face's distribution engine is the real differentiator here. By treating robot gestures and multimodal policies as modular assets on the Hub, Reachy Mini could quickly build an active developer ecosystem. If you are comfortable writing Python and assembling hardware, this is one of the friendliest gateways into physical AI available right now.