LeRobot S101 Experiment -- IN PROGRESS

Ann Yiming Yang

1/11/20262 min read

Product & Document

Wowrobo: https://shop.wowrobo.com/products/so-arm101-diy-kit-assembled-version-1?variant=46588641607897
Documentation: https://huggingface.co/docs/lerobot/so101

Summary

I’ve always been fascinated by the parallel between humans and machines.

At a fundamental level, both seem to follow patterns: observation, decision, action, feedback, iteration. Humans call it learning. Machines call it AI. Strip away the labels, and what remains is an analytical process that evolves over time.

That belief is what originally drew me to computer science. If human behavior, intelligence, and growth can be studied, modeled, and improved through patterns and systems, then learning itself is not mystical. If humans can evolve through learning and iteration, can robots do the same?

Shows like West World explore this idea in its most extreme form: machines that don’t just execute instructions, but adapt, remember, and eventually question their own nature. While fiction dramatizes it, the underlying premise isn’t far-fetched. Machines already learn differently than we do: faster, more consistently, and without biological constraints like fatigue or emotion.

In many ways, machines may eventually surpass humans in raw learning capacity (I know you may disagree) because I believe they can iterate endlessly, retain perfect memory, and scale learning in parallel.

I bought a beginner robotics kit: motors, joints, a controller board. Wiring motors. Understanding torque and movement constraints. Translating abstract commands into physical motion. Watching how small parameter changes lead to very different behaviors.

The learning experience has been humbling and grounding. Robotics is where software stops being purely virtual and starts negotiating with reality: friction, latency, error, imperfection. It forces you to think in feedback loops, not just logic trees.

Caveats

  1. Look at each arm and it has voltage requirement. Select the correct voltage power supply

  2. If you have bought the assembled version, the product has already undergone servo ID configuration, baud rate setting, magnetic encoder midpoint calibration and teleoperation functionality tests. After setting up the environment configuration and port setup, directly start operation from step "Calibrate".

  3. Please secure both arms during calibration. Otherwise, the follower may not follow the leader arm correctly.

  4. If you want to connect with camera, you need 3 usb-c ports to connect to the laptop. Buy usb-c hub if needed.