Pollen Robotics

Market context

One of the leading developer-focused robotics companies in Europe, providing accessible mobile manipulation platforms that support research, teleoperation, and embodied AI experimentation. Reachy 2

Products

• Amazing Hand
• Reachy 2
• Reachy Mini

Facts

• Website: https://www.pollen-robotics.com
• HQ: Bordeaux, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France
• Founded: 2016
• Segment: humanoid robotics

Open-source humanoid robots for embodied AI and research

Pollen Robotics develops open-source interactive robots, led by Reachy. Its Reachy 2 platform is designed for embodied AI and real-world robotics research, with open-source hardware and software positioning it as a developer-facing humanoid platform.

• Target environment: AI labs, robotics research labs, education environments, developer communities and human-facing manipulation research settings.
• Deployment model: Open-source robot platform model built around Reachy hardware, community development, research users, software openness and embodied AI applications.
• Customer context: AI researchers, robotics labs, universities, developers, open-source communities and partners building embodied AI applications.
• Workflow context: Bimanual manipulation, teleoperation, embodied AI, open-source robotics, human-robot interaction, research tasks and mobile humanoid development.
• Commercial maturity: Pollen has a clear research and open-source platform position, strengthened by Reachy 2 visibility and the Hugging Face ecosystem. Commercial maturity is strongest in research and developer adoption…
• Market position: French open-source humanoid robotics company positioned as a hardware body for embodied AI research.
• Adoption constraints: Manufacturing scale, support capacity, developer adoption, task reliability, safety, cost and conversion from research platform to durable applications.
• Adjacent context: Humanoid robotics, open-source robotics, embodied AI, mobile manipulation, teleoperation and research platforms.
• Source confidence: high

Events

• 2026-05-12 - Research Publication - Reachy Mini emotion-expression study measures perception of low-DoF robot affect - The paper studies how people perceive emotional expressions on Reachy Mini, a low-degree-of-freedom robot from Pollen Robotics and Hugging Face. In a 100-participant online study, viewers judged 10 short expression clips for emotion label, valence, arousal, a…
• 2025-12-24 - Production Milestone - Pollen Robotics Ships 3,000 Reachy Mini Units Worldwide Before Christmas - Pollen Robotics announced the shipment of 3,000 Reachy Mini units globally before Christmas. The Reachy Mini is an open-source desktop robot designed for human-robot interaction and custom applications. This milestone indicates significant production success…
• 2025-12-06 - Research Publication - Audio-tactile interaction paper uses Reachy to classify touch from body sounds - The study explores recognizing tactile interactions from sounds recorded by microphones mounted on a Pollen Robotics Reachy robot. The authors collect tapping, knocking, rubbing, stroking, scratching, and pressing samples on the robot arms and train a convolu…
• 2025-11-26 - Research Publication - Reachy 2 becomes a LeRobot-supported open humanoid data and training platform - Hugging Face LeRobot documents Reachy 2 as an open-source humanoid robot made by Pollen Robotics for embodied AI and real-world applications. The integration covers simulation, VR teleoperation, data acquisition, LeRobot recording, replay, training, and evalu…
• 2025-07-16 - Market Signal - Pollen Robotics Achieves $1 Million in Reachy Mini Sales - Pollen Robotics, acquired by Hugging Face in April 2025, launched the Reachy Mini robot in July 2025. The Reachy Mini is an open-source, desktop-sized robot priced starting at $299. Within a week of launch, the Reachy Mini achieved $1 million in sales, indica…
• 2025-07-09 - Deployment - Pollen Robotics Ships First Reachy Mini Units to Beta Testers - Pollen Robotics announced the shipment of the first Reachy Mini units to selected beta testers. The Reachy Mini is an open-source desktop robot designed for AI experimentation and human-robot interaction. Two versions are available: a Lite version requiring a…
• 2020-01-06 - Product Launch - Pollen Robotics launches Beta version of Reachy 2 in October - Beta version launches, indicating progression from earlier iterations of Reachy. Demonstrates high-precision tasks, expanding operational capabilities in diverse environments. Signals potential for open-source research collaboration following acquisition by H…
• 2025-04-14 - Acquisition - Hugging Face starts selling open-source robots through Pollen Robotics acquisition - Hugging Face announced the acquisition of Pollen Robotics as a step into open-source robot sales and hardware. The company tied the move directly to LeRobot and its broader robotics ecosystem of models, datasets, and developer tools. This is the defining robo…
• 2025-04-14 - Research Publication - Pollen Robotics releases pollen-vision library on Hugging Face - • Pollen Robotics released the pollen-vision library on Hugging Face, providing developers with tools for computer vision applications in r... • The library includes pre-trained models and datasets tailored for robotic perception tasks. • Developers can acces…
• 2024-12-09 - Demonstration - Pollen Robotics Enhances Reachy 2 with Advanced Object Manipulation Capabilities - Reachy 2 features 7 degrees of freedom per arm, enabling human-like object manipulation. The robot's arms can lift objects up to 3 kg with considerable dexterity. Reachy 2 operates on ROS2 Humble and can be controlled via Python SDK or VR teleoperation.

Team

• Matthieu Lapeyre - Co-founder
• Pierre Rouanet - Co-founder

Supply chain relationships

• Luxonis - Perception Hardware Supplier - Luxonis supplies OAK FFC-4P for Pollen Robotics.

Context tags

• Bimanual mobile manipulation - Workflow - Reachy 2 combines dual arms, mobile base and manipulation-oriented research use.
• Humanoid development platform - Peer Group - Reachy 2 is an open-source humanoid robot for embodied AI and robotics labs.
• Robotics research and education - Customer Environment - Reachy 2 is designed for AI and robotics labs, research and education.
• Mobile manipulation robotics - Peer Group - Pollen describes Reachy 2 as an ideal bimanual mobile manipulator for AI and robotics labs.
• Robot OEM - Stack Layer - Pollen Robotics builds Reachy humanoid robot platforms.
• Commercial deployment - Commercial Stage - Reachy 2 is commercially available/configured for research customers.
• Dexterous manipulation - Capability - Reachy 2 datasheet lists 7-DoF arms and grippers.
• Vision-language-action control - Capability - Reachy 2 is designed for embodied AI development, but do not overstate a specific VLA stack.

Customers and deployments

• Reachy Mini Units Shipped - 3,000 Reachy Mini units shipped worldwide - 2025-12-24 - Reachy Mini customers - desktop robot shipments - Pollen Robotics announced shipment of 3,000 Reachy Mini units worldwide before Chris…

Articles

• 2026-05-06 - Pollen Robotics is turning Reachy Mini hardware into a consumer robotics distribution layer - Hugging Face is turning Pollen Robotics Reachy Mini into a small test of robotics distribution: cheap hardware,…