HF1: Home companion robot

What is HF1?

HF1 is the first AI robot companion of the HF series. With your support, we will turn the prototype you see here into a product that you and your family can use too to learn robotics, play games, have fun together and... other exciting stuff that's still cooking. Think of it as a fun pet minus the... inconvenience (yes, that meant "poop").

By joining the waitlist with the form above, you will get important project updates in your inbox: new features, launch dates, calls for pre-orders and crowdfunding campaigns, key milestones... I won't email you too often, I promise. In addition, you can follow its creator on X or Bluesky for more frequent updates on the project.

A robot for makers

HF1 is the perfect robot for makers and hackers. It provides a foundation of out-of-the-box capabilities for you to build your AI robotics applications.

The robot has two computers that you can hack:

• AI controller: an NVIDIA Jetson Nano or higher* running a ROS2 system, with a collection of foundation nodes to build upon: speech transcription, object/person detection, localization, motion, behaviors...
• Motion controller: an Arduino-based board running an open-source motion control stack, with all the low-level control and motion primitives sorted out.​

​We'll notify everyone in the waitlist as new foundation capabilities become available.

* HF1 will support the recently announced NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit.

What can HF1 do today?

We have big plans for HF1, and it's no longer an abstract idea. There is a working prototype with expanding capabilities every week. Here are some examples of things that it can do today.

HF1 understands you without sharing your data

As you've seen in the video above, the onboard AI models enable HF1 to follow your voice commands (plus other things we have not shown yet). 

Unlike other companion robots, HF1 does not send your private data to some cloud. Everything is processed on your robot, your phone or your computer.

We won't put half of your robot's personality behind a paywall.

HF1 is expressive

Mondays are Mondays. For robots, too.

Control HF1 from your phone

This is what we call "puppet mode". Be the Jim Henson of the AI era.

Program its movements

From an API or a GUI, make your robot go places with style.

Expand it with ROS2

Since it's ROS2-compatible, it has access to a huge ecosystem of robotics tech.

HF1 can... act weird

At this point, we don't how this came to happen. Anyway, ship it!

HF1 is not exactly a printer person robot

This isn't autonomous yet. We shot this with the teleop interface of the phone app. Maybe we're just projecting. I mean, printers... come on.

Imagine creating your own shorts with your robot. Arnold Schwarzenegger would be half as famous had Ridley Scott had one of these.

HF1 is not always fond of strangers

Especially, on Halloween. Again, we used the teleop interface in the phone app to shoot this terrifying music video.

HF1 is fine. The ghostbusters came immediately, but the furry specter managed to dance his way out.

How the project started

In 2020, I was working at The Everyday Robot Project (later called Everyday Robots), a Google X project whose goal was to develop robots that could learn to help with everyday life. COVID was hitting the world hard, and kids and adults got to spend more time together at home. One night, my then 6-year-old son Nico asked: "dad, can we build a robot?". He wanted to explore what I already loved with all my heart. I was ecstatic.

We started putting together a few parts we bought online. At one point, I asked Nico what should we name the robot. Without thinking twice, he said "Hotdog Fernando". He's always been very good at naming things, but that was next level naming. The perfect marriage of our American and Spanish cultures. The HF project was born.

We worked on the robot in our spare time, intermittently throughout the years, just for the fun of it. It was not until February 2024 that I saw that Hotdog Fernando could become something else with the new AI technology. A learning experience for the coming world and, more importantly, 10x the fun. Why not share it with everybody else? I quit my job and started working full-time to turn our little robot into a companion for everyone.