The festive season at the coworking space was marked by a long-awaited delivery: a first edition Reachy Mini (Lite) desktop robot by Pollen Robotics & Hugging Face, which we ordered five months ago in July. This post covers the unboxing and assembly of it, as well as our initial ideas of activities and applications. Meet the robot at WORKSPACE & MORE in January, or get your own at hf.co/reachy-mini - where you can find the full specifications:

Robotivation

The idea emerged while organizing Swiss {ai} Weeks events, where the Bern hackathon featured a OTTO DIY robot: one of the spiritual predecessors of the Reachy Mini in the open hardware robot space, now acquired by HP. Our OTTO had been (quietly) greeting guests next to a stack of stickers at the coworking space ahead of the event. You can read about the history of this project aimed at makers of all ages here:

We even had an AI challenge at the hackathon written by Apertus, voiced by ElevenLabs, and "presented" by the little robot to the audience. This sparked discussions with robotics enthusiasts during the Swiss {ai} Weeks. We saw a prototype of the Reachy Mini when visiting the Hugging Face office, who sponsored our event, quickly ordered one - and really looked forward to getting our own in the fall. The closing ceremonies at the AI+X Summit in October also featured a range of robotics platforms presented by Swiss university labs.

Unboxing

Five months later, a neat package arrived on the doorstep. Here are some shots of the unboxing and assemby, featuring Sandro and Roböterli at the coffee bar of WORKSPACE & MORE. It took us about 2 hours to complete the build, captured in a desktop stream. If you're interested in my feedback on the process, links to more information, you will also find it after the photo gallery. Or just stop by in January to meet Reachy Mini!

Assembly

You can find the assembly guide I followed online:

Some feedback from the experience:

• Fantastic hardware design, brings out childhood emotions and memories of sci-fi robots.
• The boxes and packaging are robust, minimalist, and lovely to hold (or to give ;)
• Mostly intuitive, clear and accurate printed instructions: the basic idea of self assembly is wonderful and the experience is on the whole very positive.
• High quality components, all tools included, accessible to people with an intermediate level of electronics tinkering experience.
• The power cables are stiff and need practice to attach. They are prone to getting snagged, perhaps the sequence of their installation could still be improved.
• You can easily touch and even damage the speaker if you're not careful in the 2nd half.
• Keeping the metal rods propped up and not stuck inside the body is challenging.
• Some connections are very hard to reach, and may require the use of tweezers.
• It is not clear where the front and back of the body is, and can lead to some confusion and possibly force you to back a large number of steps at the end.
• It would have been nice to see more recycled materials used, a sustainability assessment.

The Reachy team has also made some recent advisories about potential defects in a few of the kits. Keep your eyes out for more information, improved guidance, as the product matures in the documentation.

Next steps

The next step, which Vasco in the video already discussed with us, is to install the development kit, most conveniently by installing the Reachy Mini desktop app:

From here, it is possible to start coming up with use cases – several already being featured in the Reachy Mini showcase. As mentioned in the video, the three of us had a brainstorm yesterday, and had a bunch of ideas: from hackathon helper to ergonomics expert. The later conversation with Apertus underlined our interest in developing some health advice projects.

We hope to get the Reachy powered up, finish the installation and start hacking on some open AI ideas in the new year! Thanks already to the Hugging Face / Pollen Robotics teams for the inspiration, and all your efforts to get this out to people in time for Christmas <3

Further coverage in local media and among fellow bloggers: