I would always prefer to start with a kit that will work right a way end to end, than focus on each problem subset to do deep dive. so101 is a highly available 3d printed and servo motor based robotic arm. That can be combined with nvidia orin like sbc as a good starting point.

Worth to check also https://www.printables.com/ for small cute 3d printed robot projects that you can build using stm32 or esp32 boards. You shall check Adafruit/Sparkfun like websites for dev boards, they even support micro python for quick prototypes.

https://www.hackster.io/shahizat/running-lerobot-so-101-arm-...