Hugging Face Acquires Pollen Robotics to Unleash Open Source AI Robots

Lapeyre says that selling humanoid robots remains challenging because the use cases are unclear and the systems are still unreliable—though some companies are starting to find success. Today, the technology is mostly developed by a few well financed companies including Tesla, Figure, and Agility Robotics. “With Hugging Face, we hope to democratize that,” he says. Many AI models, software frameworks, and tools that researchers and engineers rely on to build AI models and applications are already open source. This means the models are shared free of charge, with licenses that allow the code to be modified and reused. Making hardware open source typically means releasing designs, component details, and 3D models that allow pieces to be manufactured more easily. The availability of powerful open weight AI models (meaning downloadable but not necessarily fully open source) has made it easier for researchers and startups to experiment with cutting edge AI, as they can see how models work a ... Read full article.