If you haven’t already, install phosphobot on your computer. See the installation guide for more information.

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Setup the hardware

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Get your SO-100 robot arm

The SO-100 robot arm is a 6-DOF robotic arm with a 1-DOF gripper. It’s a popular robot arm for AI robotics, with many users.

The SO-100 robot arm is open source and can be built using off-the-shelf components and 3D printed parts.

  • If you want to build your own SO-100 robot arm, you can follow the assembly guide.
  • If you’re looking to buy SO-100 robot arm already assembled, you can get a starter pack on our shop.

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Attach the SO-100 arm

Find a table and fix the SO-100 robot arm using the 2 table clamps in the kit (see image below).

Make sure the arm is securely fastened and won’t move. Clear away any clutter that could get in the way of the arm’s movement.

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Plug everything together

In this order:

  1. Plug the SO-100 robot arm into the power supply using the black 12V power supply.
  2. Plug one end of the USB-C cable into the SO-100 robot arm and the other into your computer (laptop, raspberry pi, etc).
  3. If you have additional cameras, plug them into your computer

Below is an example of a full setup with a SO-100 arm, a stereoscopic camera plugged on a Raspberry Pi.

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Launch the server

If you change the cameras connected to the computer running the server, you have to restart the server.

Once everything is connected and powered on, run the following command to start the phosphobot server:

phosphobot run

It can take up to 15 seconds for the server to start for the first time because of macOS security settings.

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Check everything is setup properly

Go to the dashboard (at localhost if you are running the server on your laptop or phosphobot.local if it’s a Raspberry Pi on your network) in your web browser.

Go to Camera 0verview to check if the cameras are detected. Go to API Documentation to check if the API is running. Read the current robot position with the /joints/read endpoint.

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Calibrate the robot

This step is only relevant if you built your own robot arm: the assembled robots that we ship are already calibrated.

Your SO-100 robot should be automatically detected by the phosphobot software. However, you still need to calibrate the robot to make it work properly.

Follow this video guide to calibrate your robot:

  1. Go to the page Calibration in the dashboard.
  2. Make sure to be able to securely catch your robot, as calibration disable torque. This can make your robot fall.
  3. Follow the instructions on the screen to calibrate your robot.

Position 1: Arm is facing forward. Gripper is fully closed.

red is x, green is y, blue is z

Position 2: Arm is twisted to its left. Gripper is fully open.

red is x, green is y, blue is z

After moving to position 2, finish the calibration sequence by clicking the button.

Your calibration is saved in the phosphobot/calibration folder of your home directory. You can edit this file in a text editor to further refine the calibration.

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Start controlling the robot

Your robot is now ready to receive commands!

In the dashboard, click the Keyboard Control button to control the robot arm using your keyboard. Six keys are used to move the robot within a fixed reference frame. Press the spacebar to open or close the gripper.

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Next steps

Tou can now control your robot, record your first dataset and train an AI model to make the robot move by itself.

Control your robot

Teleoperate a real robot

Record a dataset

How to record a dataset with your robot

Train an AI model

How to train an AI model from a dataset you recorded