Hugging Face Has a New Programmable AI Robot and It's Adorable

AI software company Hugging Face is getting into the desktop robot market in truly adorable fashion. The new Reachy Mini is an 11-inch-tall desktop robot designed to be somewhat barebones at the time of purchase. Its 15 pre-programmed behaviors include facial and hand tracking and dancing, but you'll have to program it (or download others' efforts) if you want it to do much more.

That's the key point of this robot, though: to empower creatives. Its low price tag reflects its lack of reliance on expensive, proprietary licenses, and complicated developer timelines for increasing its capabilities. Instead, Reachy Mini can be programmed in Python to do whatever you want, and TechSpot reports there will be added support for JavaScript and Scratch down the line.

Reachy is designed somewhat as a robotic companion, and can already handle expressive movements. It can't walk around, but it can jiggle about ...