Path 1 of 3 · A · 5 steps
Arm
A 5 or 6 DOF desktop arm. Kinematics, calibration and teleoperation, then your first learned policy.
- 01
Run a robot in simulation
Load an MJCF model, step physics, read joint state.
Done whenYou can script a joint trajectory in the MuJoCo notebook and plot the joint angles.
Read / watch / run
- MuJoCo Python tutorial notebook
Google DeepMind · Notebook · free · colab.research.google.com/github/google-deepmind/mujoco/blob
Load a model, step physics, render, read sensors and contacts, all in a browser notebook.
- MuJoCo documentation
Google DeepMind · Docs · free · mujoco.readthedocs.io/en/stable/overview.html
The physics engine behind most open robot sims: MJCF models, actuators, contacts, sensors.
BenchNo hardware. Do it before you buy parts; it is cheaper to break things in sim. - MuJoCo Python tutorial notebook
- 02
Build the arm
Print parts, configure servo IDs, assemble, calibrate.
Done whenLeader and follower arms calibrated; the follower mirrors the leader without jitter.
Read / watch / run
- SO-101 setup guide
Hugging Face LeRobot · Docs · free · huggingface.co/docs/lerobot/so101
Source parts, configure Feetech servos, assemble and calibrate the SO-101 leader and follower arms.
- SO-ARM100 / SO-101 hardware repo
The Robot Studio · Repo · free · github.com/TheRobotStudio/SO-ARM100
STL files, BOM with vendor links and assembly notes for the open 5-DOF arm plus gripper.
- Low-cost robot arm (Koch v1.1)
Alexander Koch · Repo · free · github.com/AlexanderKoch-Koch/low_cost_robot
A Dynamixel-based leader/follower arm: printed parts, BOM and wiring.
Practise on · computed
Alexander Koch / Hugging Face LeRobot · arm
4.975
Buildable robots of this class, easiest first by the difficulty index; robots with a build package listed first.
- SO-101 setup guide
- 03
Kinematics and planning
Forward and inverse kinematics, joint limits, trajectory timing.
Done whenYou can move the tool tip to a Cartesian point and explain the IK solution you used.
Read / watch / run
- Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control
Kevin Lynch & Frank Park, Northwestern · Book · free · hades.mech.northwestern.edu/index.php/Modern_Robotics
Rigid-body motion, forward and inverse kinematics, dynamics, trajectory generation. Book, videos and code.
- MoveIt 2 tutorials
PickNik Robotics · Docs · free · moveit.picknik.ai/main/doc/tutorials/tutorials.html
Motion planning for arms in ROS 2: planning scenes, collision checking, trajectories.
- ROS 2 tutorials (Jazzy)
Open Robotics · Docs · free · docs.ros.org/en/jazzy/Tutorials.html
Nodes, topics, services, launch files, tf2 and URDF: the plumbing most robot software sits on.
BenchThe robot you built in the build step of this path. - Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control
- 04
Record demonstrations
Teleoperate, record episodes with cameras, publish a dataset.
Done when50 clean episodes of one task on the Hub in LeRobot format.
Read / watch / run
- Imitation learning on real-world robots
Hugging Face LeRobot · Docs · free · huggingface.co/docs/lerobot/il_robots
Teleoperate, record episodes, push a dataset to the Hub, train a policy and run it on the arm.
- Robotics course
Hugging Face Learn · Course · free · huggingface.co/learn/robotics-course
Robot learning from the ground up with LeRobot: data, policies, real hardware.
BenchThe robot you built in the build step of this path. - Imitation learning on real-world robots
- 05
Train and run a policy
Train ACT or a small VLA on your data, evaluate on the real arm.
Done whenThe policy completes the task on the arm and you logged its success rate over 10 tries.
Read / watch / run
- LeRobot source
Hugging Face · Repo · free · github.com/huggingface/lerobot
The code behind the docs: robot drivers, dataset format, ACT, Diffusion Policy, SmolVLA.
- Robotic Manipulation
Russ Tedrake, MIT · Book · free · manipulation.mit.edu
Perception, planning and control for picking things up, with runnable notebooks.
BenchThe robot you built in the build step of this path. - LeRobot source
Resource links checked 2026-09-25.