The Hardware
Reachy Mini, by Pollen Robotics.
An open-source, expressive robot built for AI experimentation. Compact enough for a desk, capable enough for a real project, transparent enough for a student to actually learn from.
Why this hardware
The Reachy Mini is not the cheapest robot a program could send a student. It is the platform we selected because of what it lets a student actually do. Three reasons in particular:
- It is a real platform, not a kit. Programs come and go, but the Reachy Mini comes from a research lab that builds the larger Reachy humanoid used in academic robotics. The same languages, the same libraries, the same modes of thinking carry forward.
- It is open source. A scholar can read the code. Can modify it. Can fix something themselves and contribute the fix back. This is the working model of real engineering, not a sealed black box that exists to be obeyed.
- It is expressive. Nine degrees of freedom and an animated head mean the robot can do social, perceptual, and motion-based projects in ways that a wheeled chassis cannot. Students gravitate toward problems they can see the robot reacting to.
What a scholar can build
The Reachy Mini's hardware envelope is large enough that the limit is the scholar's imagination, not the platform. Example projects scholars might attempt:
- A vision pipeline that recognizes the scholar's family members and greets them differently.
- A spoken-dialogue agent built on a small local language model.
- An accessibility assistant that reads on-screen text aloud and responds to voice commands.
- A musical performance piece using head motion synchronized to audio.
- A research replication: reproducing a published robotics or HRI paper at the Mini's scale.
For parents and counselors
We expect parents and school counselors to evaluate the program before students apply. A few specifics worth knowing:
- The robot has a camera and microphone. The student controls when these are active. The Initiative does not receive or store any audio or video from any scholar's robot. There is no remote management.
- The robot connects to the internet only when the student configures it to. Standalone operation is fully supported.
- Mentorship sessions are conducted in groups, by video call, with adults present. One-on-one contact between an individual mentor and an individual scholar is by request of the family only and is opt-in.
- The hardware is the scholar's property. Once shipped, it does not return to us.