For Students & Builders

Start learning robotics with a path that leads somewhere real

Use this page when you want a student-friendly path into robot learning, hardware, and practical community support without guessing where to begin.

Open Robotics Academy Join the Forum

What this page is: the fastest route for students, clubs, and first-time builders who want to move from curiosity into real robot projects with a clear, ordered progression.

Start here if

You want a concrete learning path, not a scattered list of articles and product pages. The full progression runs SO-101 → OpenArm → teleop → humanoids.

Best first move

Open Robotics Academy, choose the Students path, and follow the SO-101 tutorials from powered-on calibration through your first teleoperation data collection run.

What comes next

Once you know the basics, move to OpenArm for higher complexity, add teleop gloves for dexterous collection, then explore humanoid platforms when you want the full-stack challenge.

Recommended next links: Robotics Academy, SO-101 Tutorials, OpenArm Tutorials, DK1 Teleop Tutorials, and Forum.

Academy vs Developer Wiki — which one should you use?

The Robotics Academy (learn/robotics-library/) gives you a structured learning path — ordered from first hardware bringup through software, design, and deployment. Start here when you're building foundational understanding. The Developer Wiki (wiki/) is a technical reference — SDK quickstart, API reference, VLAI L1 hardware guide, and LinkerBot O6 integration docs. Switch to Wiki once you have the concepts and need exact commands, parameter tables, or SDK integration code for your project.

Learning Progression

The student progression path

This is the canonical student path through SVRC hardware, from your first powered-on arm to a working humanoid integration. Each stage builds directly on the previous one — don't skip ahead until you can explain the previous stage to a peer.

Stage 1: SO-101 arm basics

Power on, calibrate joints, run teleoperation with a leader arm, collect your first 20-demonstration dataset for a simple pick-and-place task. Learn ROS 2 topic structure and rosbag recording.

SO-101 tutorials →

Stage 2: OpenArm — higher complexity

Move to OpenArm when you need more payload, workspace, or want to run a policy model trained on your SO-101 data. OpenArm tutorials cover software setup, wrist-camera integration, and multi-camera data collection.

OpenArm tutorials →

Stage 3: Teleop interfaces and dexterous hands

Add teleoperation gloves or the DK1 teleop interface for dexterous manipulation tasks. This stage teaches you how operator motion maps to robot joint commands and how data quality changes with teleop method.

DK1 teleop tutorials →

Stage 4: Humanoid platforms

Unitree G1, H1, and mobile manipulation systems. Full-body coordination, locomotion alongside manipulation, and the data collection challenges that come with whole-body tasks. Requires solid Stage 1–3 understanding first.

Humanoid Intelligence Hub →

Suggested Path

A simple student sequence

1. Start with Robotics Academy

Use a guided tutorial path so your first project is structured around real hardware and practical steps. The Students tab in Academy shows your personal filtered view of the full curriculum.

Open Academy →

2. Pick a starter platform

SO-101 is the easiest starting point — it runs on a standard bench with ROS 2 and has the most student-accessible tutorials. Move to OpenArm once SO-101 feels repeatable.

Browse starter hardware →

3. Learn how robot data works

Understand demonstrations, data quality, synchronization, and why robot learning depends on collection choices made before you train. This shapes every decision in stages 1–4.

Read data guide →

4. Ask public questions

Use the forum for build logs, debugging threads, and practical answers from people working on similar systems. Public threads help future students who hit the same problems.

Open Forum →

Good Next Steps