Guides
SO-101 guides, in the order you need them
The install step for robot policies, written down as it happens on one SO-101 with LeRobot. Calibrate first, because every policy sees the arm through that calibration file. Then fine-tune and run a policy. Articles and notes that are not step-by-step guides are on the blog.
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How to calibrate an SO-101 arm in LeRobot
21 Oct 2026
Run lerobot-calibrate once for the follower arm and once for the leader. LeRobot writes a JSON file named after the arm's id; every policy sees joint positions through that file, so a sloppy calibration does not crash anything — the arm just moves to the wrong place.
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How to run SmolVLA on an SO-101 arm
28 Oct 2026
You don't run the downloaded SmolVLA as-is. Record about 50 teleoperated episodes of your task, fine-tune from lerobot/smolvla_base, then run the result on the arm with lerobot-rollout.