Hugging Face is stepping into the world of humanoid robotics with Reachy 2, a $70,000 AI-powered robot designed and built by its latest acquisition, Pollen Robotics.
“So excited to start selling Reachy 2 this week, the first open-source humanoid robot!” Hugging Face co-founder Clément Delangue tweeted. “It’s expensive but already in use at Cornell, Carnegie Mellon & major AI labs for robotics research and education.”
While open-source robots are not new, Reachy 2 is the first manufactured, commercially available, open-source humanoid robot.
“Reachy 2 is a versatile, expressive, and open robotic platform designed to explore the future of human-robot interaction, assistive robotics, and AI-driven behaviors,” Hugging Face claims. The robot has a “humanoid upper body” and includes stereo vision, microphones, a speaker, and lidar.
Each of the robot’s arms has seven degrees of freedom, allowing it to move in seven independent directions, mimicking the flexibility of a human arm.
“Whether you want to build an expressive assistant, a teleoperated avatar, or a robot that learns from demonstration, Reachy 2 gives you the tools to make it happen,” the company said.
Reachy 2’s launch comes as Hugging Face, an AI company and platform best known for its open-source machine learning tools, expands into robotics. In November, the company said it was developing small language models for “Next Stage Robotics.”
Reachy 2 was developed by Pollen Robotics, a Bordeaux, France-based company founded in 2016. Pollen Robotics introduced the original Reachy in 2020.
It runs on Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) and Hugging Face’s LeRobotHF framework and is accessible via a Python-based software interface.
Beyond its technical specs, Delangue clarified who Reachy 2 is—and isn’t—intended for.
“It’s not a consumer robot,” he said. “It’s an AI lab robot so quite different.”
On Monday, Hugging Face announced that it had acquired Pollen Robotics for an undisclosed amount.
In a separate post on X, the company laid out its broader ambitions for Reachy 2 and the future of open-source robotics.
“We believe robotics could be the next interface for AI—and it should be open, affordable, and hackable,” the company said. “Our vision: a future where everyone from the community can build and control their own robot companions instead of relying on closed, expensive black boxes.”
While Reachy 2 is currently aimed at research institutions, Hugging Face’s investment in humanoid robotics suggests that the machines could play a larger role in the evolution of open-source AI.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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Jason Nelson
https://decrypt.co/315184/the-worlds-first-factory-ready-open-source-humanoid-robot
2025-04-16 23:20:23
