Hugging Face has released an open AI model for robotics called SmolVLA, which outperforms larger models in both virtual and real-world environments. The platform claims that SmolVLA democratizes access to vision-language-action models and accelerates research toward generalist robotic agents.
SmolVLA is a lightweight yet capable model that can be trained and evaluated using generalist robotics technologies. It was trained on community-shared datasets, including those from Hugging Face’s LeRobot Community Datasets. The model has 450 million parameters in size but can run on a single consumer GPU or even a MacBook.
One of the unique features of SmolVLA is its asynchronous inference stack, which allows the model to separate processing tasks and enable robots to respond more quickly in fast-changing environments. The model is available for download from Hugging Face and has already been used to control a third-party robotic arm.
Hugging Face’s open AI model for robotics is part of its effort to establish an ecosystem of low-cost robotics hardware and software. The company has launched several other initiatives, including LeRobot, Pollen Robotics, and humanoids for purchase. However, it’s not the only player in the nascent open robotics race, with firms like Nvidia, K-Scale Labs, Dyna Robotics, Physical Intelligence, and RLWRLD also making strides in the field.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/04/hugging-face-says-its-new-robotics-model-is-so-efficient-it-can-run-on-a-macbook