LeRobot & Embodied AI: Intro for Software Engineers

UPDATED TIME: January 8, 4pm ET, 7pm PT

Robotics is moving from pre-programmed code towards embodied AI - where robots learn by watching us and Software engineers can take on a much larger role in their development

Join us for an intro to the frontier in this space: imitation learning, LeRobot (Hugging Face’s open-source robotics framework), and libraries like smolVLA

We’ll cover:

• Shift from deterministic logic to end-to-end learning, where policies learn directly from pixels and motor feedback
• Imitation learning & policies - leader-follower setups, diffusion-based models for handling noisy recordings, and VLA libraries
• LeRobot and Hugging Face’s ecosystem - library, datasets, and affordable arms (SO-100 and similar platforms) that can perform at near production level
• End-to-end code walkthrough of the setup process, with a live demo using SO-100 in a follow-on session

See you there!