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Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Mugglehead Investment Magazine
Alternative investment news based in Vancouver, B.C.
Hugging Face's Reachy Mini robot just got its own app store
Hugging Face's Reachy Mini robot just got its own app store
Photo credit: Marcelo Via, LinkedIn

AI and Autonomy

Hugging Face’s Reachy Mini robot just got its own app store

What once required robotics expertise is know doable by average Joes

Hugging Face has launched an agentic app store for its Reachy Mini desktop robot. The company revealed the milestone in a blog posting on May 6.

This app store lets users create new behaviours for the robot without writing any code themselves. They can type or speak a description of the desired function and an AI agent will generate the full program, simulate the behaviour to check for errors and deploy it to Reachy.

This removes traditional programming steps, debugging and the need for robotics expertise. The system handles integration with the robot’s motors, camera, microphone, speaker and AI models.

Over 200 apps now exist in the store created by more than 150 contributors. Many of them had no previous robotics background. A web simulator allows anyone to test and refine apps in a browser before installing them.

The app store launch gives Reachy Mini and its users a major boost. Since the robot debuted last year, around 10,000 units have shipped or reached customers. Before this store, turning an idea into a working behaviour on the robot took technical skills and weeks of work. Now the agentic tools handle most of the difficult parts.

“Go create weird robot behaviours. Go share them,” said Pollen Robotics co-founder Matthieu Lapeyre. “Feels like the beginning of a new moment in robotics.”

Pollen Robotics created the original hardware. Hugging Face, the company known for its open AI tools, acquired Pollen and released the robot in mid-2025. Key features of Reachy Mini include natural voice conversations, vision through its camera, expressive head movements that show personality and support for many AI tasks.

Owners can run it as a hands-free cooking assistant that reads recipe steps, a language tutor, a chess opponent that reacts dramatically to moves, a distraction reminder that notices when you grab your phone or a meeting helper that asks questions and summarizes talks. The robot interacts using voice, sight and motion in ways that feel much more alive than a simple smart speaker could.

Read more: Hugging Face launches Reachy Mini: a robotic AI companion for your desk

How Reachy compares to other desktop assistants

Reachy Mini is a mid-tier option among small desktop companion robots. Beneath Reachy sits StackChan from Espressif Systems (Shanghai) Co Ltd (SHA: 688018) subsidiary M5Stack. This little guy is a cheaper, simpler desktop bot that is popular with hobbyists.

StackChan features a cute screen face with basic movement and a camera, costing only around US$100. It works well for light AI experiments and has a fun personality but lacks Reachy’s range of expressive head motions and the depth of its easy app system.

On the upper end is Misty II, a much more expensive desk humanoid. It offers a mobile base for moving around, stronger sensors, face recognition and tools aimed at schools or serious developers. Misty gives better physical mobility and sensor power than Reachy, but it demands more technical setup and a bigger budget.

Reachy Mini does not lead in every area, but it shines with its affordable price, full open-source design, expressive personality and the agentic app store that lets non-experts add features fast. The wireless version of reachy is only around US$450.

Read more: Unitree humanoid becomes Buddhist monk at South Korean temple

 

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