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<t>Sorry if this is a basic question, but

Motor cogging torque (the 'notchy' feel from magnet-to-slot interactions) shows up as small periodic torque ripple that can translate into visible joint jitter at low speeds - it's usually mitigated with skewed magnets, better current control, or software ...

<t>@james15 Tangent, but worth mentioning:

Model predictive control (MPC) is still very much alive in production humanoids, often working alongside or underneath learned policies - MPC handles short-horizon dynamically-consistent trajectory optimization while learned components handle perception ...

Genuine beginner question - Unitree's Dex3-1 dexterous hand packs around 33 pressure/tactile sensors per hand across the fingers and palm, capable of sensing pressure roughly in the 10g-2500g range - a useful reference point for what 'production tactile sensing' looks like right now.

<t>New to this, so forgive me if this is obvious -

Force/torque sensors near the ankle give a direct read on ground reaction forces, which is valuable for balance control, but they add cost, a failure point, and routing complexity right at a joint that already takes the most mechanical abuse ...

<t>Still learning the space, so correct me if wrong -

ROS2 remains common in research and early-stage products for its tooling and ecosystem, but a number of production humanoid companies run custom, more tightly-optimized middleware for their real-time control loops, using ROS2-like tooling ...

<t>@barbara_liu Here's the relevant bit as far as I understand it:

UC Berkeley's Berkeley Humanoid Lite is a genuinely open-source, roughly $5,000, 3D-printable humanoid - structural parts print on a standard desktop printer (around a 200x200x200mm build volume), with CAD files, parts lists ...

@rossi30 Not sure I fully agree here. Pilot-to-contract conversion rate is one of the most important and least publicly available numbers in this industry - a company running many flashy pilots isn't the same as a company converting those pilots into multi-year recurring revenue.

<t>New to this, so forgive me if this is obvious -

A whole-body control engineer's day-to-day work is a mix of formulating and tuning constrained optimization problems, debugging why a controller behaves differently on hardware than in simulation, and a surprising amount of time spent on ...

<t>@ronald.clark This matches something I went through recently.

Off-the-shelf RC servos are a reasonable starting point for a first small biped because they bundle motor, gearbox, and basic position control in one part, but they generally can't deliver the torque density or backdrivability ...

<t>Genuine beginner question -

The average humanoid in 2026 carries under 2.5 kWh of battery capacity, with real-world runtimes clustering between two and four hours depending on how dynamic the workload is - static, low-motion tasks stretch runtime much further than continuous walking or lifting ...